The SAD won the Khandoor Sahib Assembly poll on Tuesday. The Congress and AAP had boycotted the bypoll. Shiromani Akali Dal candidate Ravinder Singh Brahmpura won the seat by a margin of 65,664 votes while Independent Bhupinder Singh got 17,416 votes.
Chief electoral officer of Punjab V.K. Singh said a total of seven candidates were in the fray. he said a total 1,09,593 valid votes were polled and the winning candidate got 83,080 in all. Puran Singh Sheikh of the Bahujan Samaj Party (Ambedkar) got 1,815, Independent candidate Anantjit Singh Sandhu got 1,621, Independent Sukhdev Singh Khosla got 677, Independent Dr Sumail Singh Sidhu got 2,243, and Independent Harjit Singh got 489 votes.
Meanwhile, Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal described the results of the Khadoor Sahib byelection as a massive victory for the positive agenda of peace, communal harmony, brotherhood and development in the state and said this outcome lays the foundation stone for an unprecedented SAD-BJP win in the 2017 Vidhan Sabha elections. “This is also a forceful mandate against the politics of negative and destructive ideas and forces who had sought to destabilise Punjab and hamper its progress through their anti-peace and anti-Punjab activities in recent times. This should serve as a loud message to the negative and divisive forces who tried to inject violence and instability in Punjab,” Mr Badal said in a statement here Tuesday morning.
The CM said he was surprised by the stand of the Congress and other Opposition parties who nominally boycotted this byelection on the ground that it would not result in a change in government in the state. Mr Badal said the people have punished them for abandoning the holy town of Khadoor Sahib merely for cheap political and selfish interests. “Do you contest elections only to gain power and run away from the people if there is no chance of your forming a government,” asked Mr Badal.
