Punjab Municipal Election: Congress wins in Urban body polls | Fusion - WeRIndia

It seems the Congress party has managed to attain a major victory in Punjab. In the state local body polls, the Congress party made a clean sweep. The ruling party has managed to win all seven municipal corporations of Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Abohar, Pathankot, Batala, and Bathinda.

Out of the seven, the Bathinda victory is a major one for the party as they have not been able to claim power in the city for 53 years.

It seems that the protests of farmers in the state have made quite a difference. The Lok Sabha seat of Bathinda is represented by Harsimrat Badal of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). However, her party has broken their alliance with BJP after the farm laws came in.

The Bathinda urban assembly seat was represented by Congress MLA Manpreet Singh Badal, a cousin of SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal. He tweeted that this is a historic win and the city will get a congress mayor in 53 years.

Many people are considering this win to be a major step back in power for BJP. The timing of the farmers’ protests has worked against BJP in these elections. The SAD breaking their alliance with BJP also worked against them.

The counting of the votes began at 9 am for the elections. On Tuesday, the State Election Commission had ordered re-polling at two polling booths of the Mohali Municipal Corporation.

As a result, the counting for the entire civic body will happen on Thursday. There have already been several security arrangements made at the counting centres.

On February 14, the officials recorded a 70 per cent of voting for the elections. There were a total of 9,222 candidates participating. 2,832 of them were independents and 2,037 were from the ruling Congress and 1,569 from the Shiromani Akali Dal. Furthermore, the BJP had 1,003 candidates.

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