Dasuya, July 14
Sukhjit Kaur Sahi of the BJP beat her nearest rival Arun Dogra of the Congress by 47,432 votes in the Dasuya bypoll, the counting for which was held on Saturday.

Sahi got 74,484 votes out of total 1,12,695 votes polled. Arun Dogra polled 30,062 votes. PPP candidate Bhupinder Singh Ghuman could get only 5,149 votes.

In the last elections, Congress candidate Ramesh Chander Dogra had got around 51,000 votes. This time, his son managed to get just 30,062 votes. Clearly, the Congress has lost around 40 per cent of its vote share in this assembly segment in just five months.

The margin of victory of Sahi, who rode on a strong sympathy wave to drive a wedge in the Congress vote bank, has astounded even seasoned pollsters who had guessed that the margin would be anything between 20,000 and 25,000 votes. However, the poll managers of the BJP candidate reached out to the local population highlighting the developmental works undertaken by Sukhjit’s husband, Amarjit Singh Sahi, who won the last elections by 6,200 votes. His death had necessitated the bypoll.

Sukhjit’s margin continued to increase with every passing round and by the end of the fifth round her lead had increased to 19,616 votes. The only solace for the Congress candidate came in the 11th round when Sahi managed to increase her lead by just 300 votes. This was because the EVMs for round No. 11 were from Bhol Kalota, the native village of the Congress candidate, which had a formidable number of Dogra voters.

The counting started with postal ballots and out of the 11 ballots polled, the BJP bagged 10. Going by the voting pattern, the BJP clearly made a major dent in the 25,000-strong Lubana vote bank. It was in the first three rounds that the votes from the EVMs of areas dominated by this caste were counted and it was here where Sahi managed to wrest a lead of around 11,000 votes. It is pertinent to mention here that the PPCC chief had addressed an impressive gathering in the native village of MLA Sangat Singh Gilzian, a powerful Lubana leader, during the campaigning. The Congress was expected to do well here, but it was the BJP that actually scored over its rival.

Public Relations Minister Bikramjit Majithia had openly claimed that there was a division in the Lubana vote bank and Sahi’s lead of 11,000 votes proved that Majithia was right. The BJP also managed to grab a major share in 30,000 Chang baradari votes. Senior congressmen were of the view that Mukerian MLA Rajnish Babby, who recently joined the Congress, would swing a majority of the votes in favour of the Congress. However, Babby’s magic did not work.

Political observers claim that so impressive is Sahi’s victory margin that it only goes on to prove that the BJP managed to dent the Congress vote bank among all major castes of the area.