Voters turn their back on‘inaccessible’ Cong biggies

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 12

Despite the Congress sweeping the Assembly elections, several party heavyweights had to bite the dust. The reason being inaccessibility of these leaders.

Among the prominent leaders, Sunil Jakhar’s defeat in a bipolar contest has astonished many in political circles. He lost to BJP’s Arun Narang with around 4,000 votes. It is the same seat from where the BJP lost its security deposit in 2012 by getting just 9,000 votes.

According to political observers, this time the BJP played a caste card by giving the ticket to Narang and was successful in polarising the votes of the Arora community.

Before the elections, the local Arora sabha had requested the BJP top leadership to give ticket to someone from their community, which proved fatal for Jakhar.

Besides Jakhar, former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal is another Congress stalwart whose defeat left many shocked. Bhattal remained unbeaten from Lehragaga for the past 25 years. The most common reason being cited behind her defeat is lack of development in the area.

Taking advantage of the situation, former Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa started development works in the constituency in the past two years and defeated her with a margin of more than 27,000 votes.

Another common accusation against Bhattal was that she was not available in the constituency and spent most of her time in Chandigarh.

Another prominent Congress leader and close associate of Capt Amarinder Singh who lost the election was Kewal Singh Dhillon from Barnala.

Locals say Dhillon was defeated as they were tired of him becoming active just three months before the elections and he often tried to swing the election with money. He lost to AAP with a narrow margin of 2,000 votes.

Three-time MLA and Congress candidate from Batala Ashwani Sekhri lost with a narrow margin of just 400 votes to Akali Dal’s Lakhbir Singh Lodhinangal at Batala.

When the Congress swept the entire Majha, Sekhri’s defeat in the triangular contest is being attributed to the developmental works done by Lodhinangal in the villages in the past five years. He got a large number of votes from villages of the constituency, which has around 80 villages.

Former Cabinet Minister Jagmohan Kang also lost narrowly with 2,000 votes to AAP’s Kanwar Sandhu. The main reason behind his defeat was that in his two terms as MLA he failed to deliver and largely remained inaccessible to voters.