Chandigarh, June 23 (IANS) State ruling AAP candidate Sanjeev Arora was leading with a margin of 2,500 votes in a close contest, as per initial counting trends, against his nearest rival and Congress nominee Bharat Bhushan Ashu from the Ludhiana West Assembly seat in Punjab on Monday.

Interestingly, BJP candidate Jiwan Gupta, who was ahead of Ashu in the third round, has slipped to the third spot, while Shiromani Akali Dal nominee Parupkar Singh Ghuman is in the fourth spot.

After six out of 14 rounds of counting, Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament and AAP candidate Sanjeev Arora was leading with 14,486 votes.

Congress’ Ashu polled 12,200 votes, trailing by a margin of 2,286 votes.

The counting of ballots for the high-stakes Ludhiana (West) Assembly seat for the state ruling AAP began on Monday amidst tight security arrangements.

The polling for the seat was held on June 19, which saw 51.33 per cent voting out of 1.74 lakh electorates.

The seat fell vacant after the death of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January.

The state ruling Aam Aadmi Party is eyeing to retain the seat, while the main Opposition Congress is aiming to win back the seat that it had represented six times.

In total, 14 candidates are in the fray for the urban seat. The BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal have also fielded candidates for the seat.

The main contest largely seems between AAP’s candidate Sanjeev Arora, a local industrialist and social worker, Congress’ former Minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu, who represented the seat twice from 2012.

Ashu was defeated by his friend-turned-foe Gogi, 58, by a margin of 7,512 votes in the 2022 Assembly poll.

By fielding the Rajya Sabha MP, speculations in political circles are rife that AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal, who’s active in the state politics after facing humiliating defeat not only of his party but his bastion in Delhi Assembly elections, is going to the Rajya Sabha in his place in case Sanjeev Arora wins the bypoll. However, the party denies that Kejriwal is moving to the Rajya Sabha.

Interestingly, in October 2024, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out a raid at the residence of AAP candidate Arora as part of a money laundering probe linked to a land ‘fraud’ case.

The BJP, which is expanding its footprints in the state’s Hindu-dominated urban constituencies, is eyeing to give a tough contest to both the state ruling AAP and the Congress by fielding a strong and credible local face with grassroots connect.

In the run-up to the polling, the Bharatiya Janata Party carried out a scathing attack on the three-year rule of AAP’s governance in Punjab, accusing them of transforming the state into a “rehabilitation centre” for Kejriwal’s rejected Delhi loyalists.

AAP is confident of a victory owing to its pro-people governance, while Opposition parties bank on the anti-incumbency wave against the helm. However, a confident Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann described this byelection as a battle between “humility” and “arrogance”. AAP convener Kejriwal had started campaigning in March but was absent during the final days of the campaign, leaving the responsibility to party senior leader Manish Sisodia.

–IANS

vg/dpb