Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Mohinder Bhagat was leading from Punjab’s Jalandhar West constituency in the bypoll election, the results of which are being announced on Saturday (July 13).
As votes were being counted, his closest rival for the seat was Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sheetal Angural. Mohinder Bhagat was leading with over 27,000 votes.
Jalandhar West, which is a scheduled caste reserved constituency was being represented by AAP legislator Sheetal Angural, who tendered his resignation on March 28, a day after joining the BJP.
On June 3, he had written to Punjab assembly Speaker Kultar Singh to allow him to withdraw his resignation, but the request was not accepted, thereby necessitating the bypolls.
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Mohinder Bhagat was fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after switching from the BJP last year. He is the son of former cabinet minister and veteran BJP leader Chunni Lal Bhagat. He ran as a BJP candidate in the 2022 assembly elections from the same constituency but was unsuccessful.
Mohinder Bhagat has contested twice from Jalandhar West on the BJP ticket. He was chairman of the Medium Industries Development Board of Punjab from 2007-2011. He also served as the BJP’s Punjab vice-president from 1998-2001 and again from 2017-2020.
The Punjab Legislative Assembly has a strength of 117 members, of which the ruling party AAP has 90 members, while the opposition Congress has 13 seats, SAD has three seats, BJP two, BSP one, and independent candidates are three.
Earlier in 2022, Sheetal Angural had won on the AAP ticket with the margin of 4,253 votes from then Congress nominee Sushil Kumar Rinku. Mohinder Bhagat polled 33,486 votes, while Angural got 39,213 votes.
Rinku polled 34,960 votes and the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Anil Meena got only 4,125 votes.
The polling for the seat was held on July 10, and the nomination process commenced on June 14 and concluded on June 21.