Jalandhar bypoll: Voting under way for high-stakes Lok Sabha seat in Punjab

JALANDHAR: Voting commenced on Wednesday morning for the crucial Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-election, in which four major political parties, namely AAP, Congress, BJP, and Shiromani Akali Dal, are contesting against each other to emerge victorious in the Dalit-dominated region.
Voting for the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency began at 8am and will continue till 6pm.
There are a total 16,21,800 eligible voters, including 8,44,904 males, 7,76,855 females, and 41 transgenders in the constituency.
Nineteen candidates, including four women, are in the fray. The counting of votes will take place on May 13.
There are 1,972 polling stations in the constituency and 497 of them have been identified as critical.
The Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat, which is reserved for Dalits, became vacant after the demise of Santokh Singh Chaudhary, a Congress MP. He passed away earlier this year in January while participating in the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra in Phillaur, Jalandhar, due to a cardiac arrest.
Former Congress MLA Sushil Rinku, who switched to Punjab's ruling party, is contesting for the AAP, while Karamjit Kaur, the wife of late Santokh Chaudhary, has been nominated by the Congress to contest in the election.
Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, a Dalit Sikh who recently joined the BJP after quitting the Shiromani Akali Dal, has been nominated by the party to contest in the election. Atwal is the son of former Punjab Vidhan Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal, who also joined the BJP.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has put forward Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi, a two-time MLA from Banga and a medical practitioner, as their candidate in the election. The SAD candidate has received support from their ally, the Bahujan Samaj Party. Gurjant Singh is the candidate of the Simranjit Singh Mann-led Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar).
With inputs from PTI