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'Singh is King' slogan works for Congress in Punjab

Last Updated 16 May 2009, 18:42 IST

Redeeming itself from the crushing loss in the assembly elections in 2007, the Congress, riding on the projection of Singh’s Sikh credentials besides benefiting from an under current of anti-incumbency against the Akali-BJP regime, won a sweet victory.

The ruling Akali Dal won four seats, including the Bathinda seat where the Badal family had staked its prestige by fielding Harsimrat Kaur Badal, wife of deputy CM Sukhbir Badal and daughter-in-law of chief minister P S Badal.

The BJP which contested three seats won only the Amritsar seat, where Navjot Sidhu scored a hat-trick of victories while Vinod Khanna lost from Gurdaspur and Som Prakash narrowly lost to the Congress candidate from Hisharpur.

Harsimrat defeated her Congress rival Raninder Singh, son of former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh by a margin of over one lakh votes.

However, Capt Amarinder Singh’s wife, Perneet Kaur won from the Patiala constituency for the third successive time.

Three of the young Congress candidates fielded by Rahul Gandhi, won their seats. Ravneet Bittu, grandson of late chief minister Beant Singh won his Anandpur Sahib seat and Vijay Inder Singla from Sangrur. AICC spokesman Manish Tewari won from Ludhiana constituency. However, 32-year-old Sukhwinder Singh lost from the Faridkot constituency.

Chief Minister Badal, while accepting defeat said his party had not done “that badly though”. The Akali-BJP combine had won 11 of the 13 seats in 2004.

Interestingly, Badal’s aggressive son, Sukhbir described Congress’ defeat from Bathinda as “Waterloo” for Singh and declared that the Congress’ defeat from Bathinda would write “political obituary of Capt Singh.”

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(Published 16 May 2009, 18:42 IST)

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