Jalandhar: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the Jalandhar parliamentary by-poll last week, slicing through Congress’s 24-year grip to get its lone member in the Lok Sabha. Victor Sushil Kumar Rinku, a former Congress MLA who was inducted into AAP only last month, got the “Ikk Mauka (one chance)” he had sought, albeit for a truncated term of around 11 months till next year’s general election.
Rinku won by 58,691 votes over Karamjit Kaur, the Congress nominee and widow of previous MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary whose death in January this year during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra necessitated the by-poll. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BSP combine came third. BJP was pushed to fourth spot and its nominee lost the security deposit.
For AAP, the win could not be sweeter. It had been routed in the Sangrur Lok Sabha by-poll three months after sweeping the 2022 assembly elections. Bhagwant Mann was AAP’s Sangrur MP but resigned to take over as CM after the landslide.
“This is the people’s victory. They have come to know that only the AAP can understand their pain and bring Punjab back on track,” Rinku told reporters after the results were announced. “I thank the party leadership, including party supremo Arvind Kejriwal and (Punjab chief minister) Bhagwant Mann for reposing faith in me.”