India: AAP’s Gurmeet Singh Khudian defeats SAD chief Parkash Singh Badal in Punjab

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Gurmeet Singh Khudian defeated Shiromani Akali Dal chief Parkash Singh Badal from the Lambi Assembly seat in Punjab on Thursday.

AAP’s Khudian won with a formidable margin of 11,396 votes.

Khudian won the Assembly constituency Lambi constituency by bagging total votes of 66,313 while Badal trailed at second position with a total of 54,917.

Badal was Chief Minister of state from 1970 to 1971, 1977 to 1980, 1997 to 2002, and from 2007 to 2017.

Punjab witnessed a multi-cornered contest this time with Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Shiromani Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance, and the coalition of Bharatiya Janata Party-former chief minister Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress party as key players.

According to the Election Commission of India, AAP has won 54 seats and is leading on 38 others at 3:57 PM in the 117 seat Punjab assembly.

As AAP is set to win Punjab, it will be the party’s maiden victory in the state and a vast improvement from its performance in the 2017 elections when it had finished second behind Congress.

Congress went into the polls, battling factionalism and anti-incumbency. The party changed its Chief Minister in September last year even as the party’s new state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu hinted about his own chief ministerial ambitions. Congress finally declared Charanjit Singh Channi as the first Dalit Chief Minister of Punjab, endorsing him for the chief ministerial face days before the polling on February 20.

Punjab recorded an average voter turnout of 65.50 per cent on February 20 compared to over 77 per cent in 2017.