Badal bastion Bathinda falls to Congress

Tribune News Service
Bathinda, February 17

The Congress has won the Bathinda MC poll by winning 43 of the 50 wards and is all set to have its Mayor for the first time. SAD secured its win in seven wards, while the BJP and AAP failed to open its account.

In a major turnaround, PPCC secretary Tehal Singh Sandhu’s wife Manjit Kaur lost from ward No 1 with just 25 votes and even ex-deputy mayor and BJP candidate Gurinderpal Kaur Mangat lost badly with only 86 votes and remained on the fourth position.

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• Farm laws backfire on BJP

BJP loses to NOTA

• In two wards of Bathinda, NOTA got more votes than BJP candidates. In ward No 10, Raj Kumar polled only 12 votes, while NOTA got 21
• Manju Kaur polled 18 votes and NOTA got 39 in ward No 20. In many other wards, BJP candidates gave a tough fight to NOTA
• The saffron party got less than 100 votes in 20 wards. Experts say wrong selection of candidates led to the party’s debacle as where the party fielded good candidates, it got more than 600 votes in only two wards

Two candidates got the same number of 334 votes and it was a tie between AAP’s Ranbir Singh and Independent Surjit Singh. Later, the Independent was declared winner by a toss in ward No 2 of Goniana MC.

Cornered over the farm laws, the BJP performed poorly in most wards it contested in Bathinda. In ward No 24, the BJP candidate got only 22 votes out of around 3,000 polled, 61 in ward No 18 and 55 votes in ward No 21. However, BJP Bathinda urban president Vinod Kumar Binta, who contested as an Independent on tractor symbol, won by 229 votes from ward No 2 in the Bhucho MC.

In CM Capt Amarinder Singh’s native Mehraj village, of the 13 seats, Congress won 10, SAD one and Independents two. In the Sangat MC poll, SAD won in 7 wards out of the 9, while the Congress won in only two. The Congress also won comfortably in Kotha Guru, Bhagta, Maluka, Bhai Rupa, Maur, Raman, Bucho Mandi, Nathana, Goniana, Kotshamir and Kotfatta municipal councils and nagar panchayat polls. While AAP was able to win three seats in Nathana, BSP won Bhai Rupa.

Finance Minister Manpreet Badal said, “This is a vote for the Congress. This is a vote for the people who stood up to the might of those vested interests who wish to destroy India’s agriculture and rural economy.”