DHURI – The SAD recorded a landslide victory in the Dhuri Assembly bypolls today with its candidate Gobind Singh Longowal defeating his nearest Congress rival Simar Pratap Singh Barnala by 37,501 votes. The polling was held on April 10.
With this, SAD’s tally in the 117-member Assembly has touched 59, giving it a clear majority and making it independent of BJP in the House.
The margin of defeat for the Congress candidate was higher than the total number of votes polled by Barnala (30,095). Longowal secured 67,596 out 1,10,951 votes polled. Longowal had unsuccessfully contested the 2012 elections when he lost by 12,473 votes to Congress’ Arvind Khanna, who quit the seat last year. The SAD has won the seat for the fifth time now. The party had earlier won in 1977, 1980, 1985 and 2002.
The 10 other candidates in the fray lost their security deposits. The third prominent candidate was Surjit Singh Kalabula of the SAD (Amritsar) who secured 7,554 votes. Sukhdev Sharma, a joint candidate of the CPI, CPM, CPM-L and CPM Punjab (Pasla), secured 1,933 votes. Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Party candidate Manjit Kaur polled 203 votes. Bikram Kumar from Dhanaula, who had hurled a shoe at Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal during a political conference in Issru (Khanna) on August 15, secured only 835 votes.
