Unlike Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party?(SAD-BJP)?which remained in denial, Congress promised to wipe out drugs within four weeks of coming into power.
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The nearly two-thirds majority for the Congress belied exit poll predictions that claimed a tough fight and even a hung house in the state.
He also made sitting Congress MP from Ludhiana Ravneet Singh ‘ Bittu’ to contest against deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal from Jalalabad. He is facing Cong’s Lalli Majithia and AAP’s Himmat Singh Shergill.
A victorious Amarinder Singh tonight received grand welcome in his constituency Patiala Urban by jubilant supporters amid drums beats and victory slogans.
The SAD-BJP alliance, which managed to get only 17 seats in the assembly, was relegated to the third spot behind the victor Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). “He will go by merit and seniority while trying a balance between factors of caste, religion, gender and region as he has won on the promise of good governance”, a senior party leader said.
The poll of exit polls for the 117-member Punjab assembly has predicted a too-close-to-call fight between Captain Amarinder Singh’s Congress and the debutant Aam Aadmi Party. The ruling Akali-BJP combine were decimated, with 18 seats between them.
This Saturday, there could not have been a better birthday gift than this for Captain Amarinder Singh – a Congress victory in Punjab. Our first priority will be to eradicate drugs from Punjab.
Sidhu, who was sidelined within the BJP over the last few years, has been very critical of the Badals.
Several BJP stalwarts also suffered defeats, such as Anil Joshi in Amritsar North, KD Bhandari in Jalandhar North and Manoranjan Kalia in Jalandhar Central, clearly showing that the Modi wave which swept UP and Uttarakhand did not touch Punjab at all.
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“This is the decision of the people and we accept it”. Moreover, it was precisely in these hitherto AAP-dominated areas that Congress gained the most in terms of vote-share as well, suggesting that traditional Congress-voters who had turned to AAP in 2014 had returned to it in this assembly election. In the end, the Congress may have received the most number of votes, but the SAD alone was second in that respect, with the AAP third.
