BJP wins record 19 seats, helps SAD to power in Punjab

Chandigarh, Feb 27 (UNI) The spectacular showing by the BJP helped the SAD-BJP alliance wrest power in Punjab and oust the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh led Congress.

In the 2002 assembly polls, the BJP which bagged just three seats out of the 23 contested, was largely responsible for keeping the alliance out of power. The SAD had then won 41 seats and could not reach the magical figure of 59 seats in the 117 member assembly.

In the current polls, the BJP contested 23 seats, winning a record 19, one more than it won in the 1997 elections in alliance with SAD. In the last polls the party had won in Garhshankar, Hoshiarpur and Ferozpur City. However, it lost the Garhshankar seat in a bypoll.

The party's high profile candidate Navjot Singh Sidhu retained the Amritsar Parliamentary seat for the BJP defeating Finance minister Surinder Singla.

Besides retaining Hoshiarpur and Ferozpur City, the BJP candidates were victorious in Amritsar (central), Amritsar North, Batala, Sujanpur, Dinanagar, Narot Mehra, Dasuya, Phagwara, Mukerian, Jalandhar (North), Jalandhar (Central),Jalandhar South, Ludhiana (north), Ludhiana (East) Rajpura, Fazilka and Jalalabad.

The four seats that it lost were Amritsar (West), Nangal, Garhshankar and Abohar.

The party bagged all the four seats it contested in Gurdaspur district, three out of four in Hoshiarpur district, three out of four in Ferozepur, all three in Jalandhar City and two each in Amritsar and Ludhiana.

Mr Raj Khurana, an expelled Congress MLA, who contested on the BJP ticket retained the Rajpura seat in Patiala district while Swarna Ram won the Phagwara (reserve) seat.

The other prominent winners of the party were its firebrand leader and state senior vice president Laxmi Kanta Chawla(Amritsar central), Master Mohal Lal (Pathankot), Manoranjan Kalia (Jalandhar Central), Satpal Gosian (Ludhiana East), Tiksham Sood and Sukhpal Singh Nannu both of whom retained their Hoshiarpur and Ferozpur City seats respectively.

The BJP candidate K D Bhandari who contested his first assembly poll springed one of the biggest surprises in the current elections when he defeated the strongman of Jalandhar and Industries Minister Avtar Henry from Jalandhar North. Anil Joshi, a close friend Navjot Singh Sidhu, won the Amritsar North seat.

The four seats that the party lost were Amritsar West, Garhshakar, Abohar and Nangal where its senior leader and former minister Madan Mohan Mittal tasted defeat.

BJP's Jagdish Sahni won by a slender margin of 79 votes from Batala, the narrowest victory margin in the current elections. In Amritsar Central Ms Chawla defeated her traditional rival and Deputy Speaker Darbari Lal.

UNI