Arora Wins Panjab’s Ludhiana West; SAD Does Not Gain Voter Confidence

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Sanjeev Arora has won the Panjab’s Ludhiana West Assembly by-poll by a margin of over 10K votes. Indian National Congress' (INC) Bharat Bhushan Ashu was second, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Jiwan Gupta was third and Shiromani Akali Dal's (SAD) Parupkar Singh was fourth. As the several months long high voltage AAP campaign ended on 17 Jun, there were multiple allegations of AAP luring voters with freebies including grocery, clothes, notebooks, school bags, stationery, and so on with images of the candidate party’s symbol ‘broom’ printed on them. Opposition said AAP had brazenly flouted the Model Code of Conduct. The turnout for the election was 51.8%. AAP has increased their vote share from 34.8% in the last elections in 2022 to 39%. The vote share of INC and BJP has fallen by 1.08% and 1.67%, respectively. SAD’s share has gone up marginally by 0.39% but the party still lost its deposit. Since 1995, in Panjab—including this result—23 of the 29 by-polls have been won by the ruling party or alliance candidate. While the winner is not a surprise, in this election SAD was looking for people to ratify its recently re-elected chief Sukhbir Singh Badal despite the Akal Takht’s (Eternal Throne) edicts on 2 Dec. The results show the people do not approve of how SAD violated the edicts. After his loss, taking moral responsibility, Ashu has resigned from his post of working president of the Panjab INC. During his campaign for Arora, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal had said if Arora wins, he will be inducted as a minister in the state government. This will pave the way for a top AAP leader to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) which Arora shall vacate. It is being speculated that Kejriwal will be nominated. The election was widely seen as a run up to the 2027 state Assembly elections. AAP seems to have consolidated its position but the challenge from INC remains. BJP and SAD need to ramp up efforts to stay in contention (earlier coverage).