Amritsar: Hat-trick for Gurjeet Singh Aujla as yet another high-profile BJP nominee rejected

GS PAUL

Amritsar, June 4

Maintaining the precedent of Congress’ supremacy on the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat, Gurjeet Singh Aujla scored the hat-trick by getting the holy city residents’ mandate once again in his favour consecutively for the third term as MP.

Aujla, who earned the sobriquet of “Singh is King” for daring to intercept the two intruders who jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery last year, retained the seat by garnering 2,55,181 votes while trouncing his rival AAP’s candidate and state minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal who polled 2,14,880 votes. BJP’s diplomat-turned-politician Taranjit Singh Sandhu trailed at third place with 2,07,205 votes and SAD’s Anil Joshi had to contend with 1,62,896 votes.

It is for the third time that the Amritsar voters have rejected BJP’s another high-profile candidate Sandhu, a former envoy to US. Yet, he gave a spirited fight to Dhaliwal.

Amritsar Lok Sabha constituency comprised nine Assembly segments in all-five urban bifurcated as East, West (SC), Central, North and South; four rural included Attari, Ajnala, Majitha and Rajasansi (SC).

With AAP having pre-eminence in the seven Assembly segments, it was advantageous for Dhaliwal, yet Aujla was successful in denting the AAP’s citadel in both urban and rural areas.

Barring Majitha, where the advantage goes to Joshi who got 40,981 votes, Aujla got a good lead from rural areas, Rajasansi (36,285 votes) and Attari (32479 votes). Even in Ajnala, the home turf of Dhaliwal, he managed to pocket 30,309 votes, only to remain next to Dhaliwal (35,344 votes).

In urban segment, Aujla led in West with 35,012 votes and fared well in South with 21,728 votes, second to Dhaliwal (28,431 votes). In the East too, Aujla got a sizable vote share (28,440 votes), whereas Dhaliwal got just 18,402 votes. Similarly, in Central, Aujla got 24878 votes whereas Dhaliwal got 11,255 votes.

Nonetheless, Aujla registered victory with a total margin of 40,301 votes.

He said his priority would be to curb the drug abuse in the region, development of Amritsar, making it drug-free, offering opportunities, generation of employment especially in the border belt.

The seat has traditionally been a Congress citadel from the times of Gurmukh Singh Musafir and then Raghunandan Lal Bhatia.

Navjot Singh Sidhu, as a BJP candidate, had defeated six-time parliamentarian Bhatia in the 2004 elections. The seat remained with Sidhu till 2014 when he had to make way for BJP’s Arun Jaitley, who lost it to the then Congress candidate Capt Amarinder Singh.

Since then Aujla had kept the Congress’ stronghold intact by winning 2017 bypolls, with a margin of two lakh votes, followed by 2019 General polls defeating BJP’s union state minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

Meanwhile, abiding by the directions of the Akal Takht, Aujla preferred to subdued the celebratory affair in the wake of ongoing ‘shaheedi saptah’ (week of mourning) to mark the Operation Blue Star anniversary.