Chhavi Bhatia
New Delhi—The Congress party swept the Punjab local body polls, winning seven of the eight municipal corporations results of which were declared today. The ruling state party bagged Hoshiarpur, Pathankot, Kapurthala, Abohar, Batala and Bathinda—the last being a historic win as the home turf of Badals returned to the Congress fold after 53 long years. While there was no clear winner in Moga, the Congress emerged as the single largest party here. Results for Mohali will be announced on Thursday.
The farmers’ protest that is raging on the borders of Delhi can be perceived to have cast a long shadow on the performance of Bharatiya Janata Party which lost its two strongholds—Pathankot and Bathinda. Bathinda is represented by Harsimrat Kaur Badal of Shiromani Akali Dal, one of the oldest allies of the BJP till they parted ways following the unrest among the state farmers’ over the contentious farm laws by the Centre. The elections for this seat were a battle of prestige this as the Bathinda urban assembly seat is represented by Congress MLA and Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who is also the cousin of SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal.
The saffron party, meanwhile, suffered a major blow in Pathankot too, considered its bastion. It could secure only 11 seats despite the mayor from the BJP. The Congress got 37 seats out of the total 50. The BJP also lost in neighbouring Saujanpur, another BJP turf where the Congress won eight seats out of total 15 seats, and the BJP could manage only five.
Sweetening the victory for the Congress is the massive margins by which it won in some of the corporations. For instance, it won 43 of the 50 wards in Bathinda and also won 49 of the 50 seats in Abohar. In Kapurthala it left behind SAD by 40 wards, prompting the Badal’s party get mere three. In the final count till now, the Congress had won 1,199 of the 1,815 wards (municipal councils) and 281 of the 350 municipal corporation seats, with the SAD trailing at 289 and 33, respectively. The BJP had 38 and 20 while the AAP 57 and nine. The remaining went largely to independents and others.
Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, soaring high on the spectacular performance of his party stated that this was just a foretaste of things to come in 2022 when the Assembly elections will be held. “The drumming that SAD, BJP, and AAP have received in these civic polls is just the tip of the iceberg, and all three are set to be wiped out of Punjab’s political arena, and subsequently from the nation’s political landscape, in the months ahead,” he said in an official statement.
The results swung heavily in favour of the Congress as compared to its poor show in the 2015 municipal corporation elections in Bathinda, Hoshiarpur, Moga and Pathankot districts where it could manage a miniscule 11 seats back then. Its count improved to a whopping 149 this time. Similarly, in the wards, from 356 in 2015, the Congress score now has gone up to 1480.
