Neena Mittal only woman to win seat in Patiala district

Ravneet Singh

Patiala, March 10

Neena Mittal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is the only woman to win seat from Patiala district in the 2022 Assembly elections. The contest in Rajpura segment of the district remained rather interesting. As many as 1,36,864 votes out of 1,42,228 valid votes were polled in the constituency.

Neena Mittal, who managed to win with a margin of 3,756 votes in the initial two rounds, was closely followed by the Congress’, Hardyal Singh Kamboj. Soon, the vote count of the BJP’s, Jagdish Kumar Jagga, surpassed that of Kamboj by the sixth round. By the eighth of 15 rounds, the margin amongst Mittal and Jagga was reduced to merely 882 votes, but the counting came to an end wherein the AAP candidate won the seat with a margin of 22,493 votes.

Mittal bagged a total 54,834 votes while Jagga remained the runner-up with 32,341 votes. Kamboj finished third with a total of 28,589 votes while Charanjit Singh Brar of the SAD finished fourth with 15,006 votes.

Charanjit Singh Brar, the SAD candidate, along with Avtar Singh Harpalpur of the LIP, and Jagjit Singh of the SAD (Mann) lost their security deposits.

Neena Mittal is a first-time MLA from the constituency. She comes from a business family and has been with the AAP since 2013. She contested the Patiala Lok Sabha seat in 2019.

Gurlal gets 48.11% votes

The Aam Aadmi Party’s Ghanaur candidate, Gurlal Ghanaur, defeated big leaders of the Congress and the SAD in Patiala district. Importantly, he alone grabbed a little less than 50 per cent of the total votes cast in the constituency. Of 1,30,491 votes polled, Gurlal managed to get 62,783 votes, which comes to 48.11 per cent of the total count.

He won the seat from Madan Lal Jalalpur, the runner-up Congress candidate and the sitting MLA, with a margin of 31,765 votes. A total of 31,018 votes were cast in favour of Jalalpur. Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra of the SAD got only 24,141 votes. Only 5,728 votes were cast in favour of Vikas Sharma of the BJP, who along with Jagdeep Singh of the SAD (Mann), lost his security deposits.

Chetan Singh Joramajra bags 50.09% in Samana

As many as 1,48,473 votes were cast in the Samana constituency out of which Chetan Singh Joramajra of the AAP bagged 74,375 votes. He won the seat with a margin of 39,713 votes from Surjit Singh Rakhra, the runner-up and senior leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), who got only 34,662 votes. Rajinder Singh of the Congress bagged 23,576 votes while Surinder Singh of the PLC got 5,084 votes.