Punjab: Simranjit Singh Mann deals huge jolt to AAP, wrests Sangrur Lok Sabha seat

BARNALA: In a big blow to the AAP government in Punjab in only 100 days of its gaining power, SAD (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann defeated the ruling party candidate Gurmail Singh from the Sangrur parliamentary seat vacated by Bhagwant Singh Mann when he became the chief minister. Simranjit Mann got 2,53,154 votes and defeated Gurmail by a margin of 5,822 votes.
The byelection was necessitated after the AAP registered a landslide victory in the 2022 assembly elections, winning 92 of the 117 constituencies, and then MP Bhagwant Mann was chosen as the chief minister.
According to political analysts, the worsening law and order situation in the state proved dear to the ruling AAP as opposition parties, especially Simranjit Mann (77) raised the issue, claiming killings were taking place daily. The May 29 gruesome murder of Punjabi singer Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, known as Sidhu Moose Wala, a day after AAP had pruned the security of over 400 people, including his, is said to have played a big role in the defeat of the AAP candidate.
The Akali leader is returning to Parliament after 18 years. He had won the Tarn Taran parliamentary constituency in 1989, when he created a row insisting that he should be allowed entry into the House with a kirpan, saying this was a Sikh's right. He subsequently resigned his seat in protest. Later, he won the Sangrur seat in 1999, defeating Surjit Singh Barnala.
This time he agreed to not take his kirpan inside the House "out of respect for the other legislators". This time, in his third victory as an MP, he has stopped the AAP from achieving a hat trick as it had won from Sangrur in 2014 and 2019. Only Barnala has won the Sangrur parliamentary seat on three occasions - in 1977, 1996, and 1998.
Punjab's ruling party was confident of its victory as chief minister Mann had taken the reins of the campaign in his hands and held road shows in all the nine assembly segments falling in the Sangrur parliamentary constituency. Even AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal took out road shows in Sangrur and Barnala on June 20.
Apart from the candidates of SAD (Amritsar) and AAP, the security deposit of all others has been forfeited. The Akali Dal had fielded life convict in Beant Singh assassination case Balwant Singh Rajoana's sister Kamaldeep Kaur. She had contested the election on the sole issue of release of Bandi Singhs (Sikh prisoners) who have completed their jail terms. BJP had fielded Kewal Singh Dhillon (earlier in Congress), for whom two central ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Som Parkash had campaigned, while Congress had fielded former MLA Dalbir Goldy.