Bathinda: From 32,423 votes in Lok Sabha elections earlier this year to just 715 votes in the recent bypolls, support for Panthic candidates has slid drastically in Gidderbaha assembly seat, which is part of Faridkot parliamentary constituency.
In the Lok Sabha elections, when he was elected Faridkot MP, ex-PM Indira Gandhi assassin Beant Singh’s son Sarabjit Singh Khalsa had taken the lead in Gidderbaha.However, now in the assembly seat bypoll from Gidderbaha, Behbal Kalan police firing victim Krishan Bhagwan Singh’s son Sukhraj Singh has got fewer votes than NOTA (none of the above), which got 889 votes.
Both Sarabjit Singh’s father late Beant Singh and Sukhraj Singh’ son Krishan Bhagwan Singh are considered revered figures in Panthic circles. Beant had killed Indira to avenge Operation Bluestar, while Krishan Bhagwan had lost his life during protests against acts of sacrilege in Oct 2015.
Sarabjit initially wanted to field late Deep Sidhu’s brother Mandeep Singh from Gidderbaha and tried to prepare ground for him, but Mandeep backed out. Going by it, Khalsa did not campaign for Sukhraj.
Khalsa, when contacted, said Sukhraj was contesting under the banner of SAD (Amritsar) headed by ex-MP Simranjit Singh Mann. “I had decided to oppose Mann. Going by it, I never campaigned for him. It is for political pundits to find out who got the vote which I had got. But, if Mandeep Singh would have contested, he must have been in a much better position,” he said.
During the Lok Sabha polls, Karamjit Singh Anmol of AAP got 20,310 votes in Gidderbaha, Amarjit Kaur of Congress got 20,273, Rajwinder Singh of SAD got 19,791 votes, and Hans Raj Hans of BJP got 14,850 votes. As SAD was not contesting the bypoll from Gidderbaha, it seems nearly 20,000 votes of SAD were transferred to AAP candidate Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon.