Punjab Chief Electoral Officer VK Singh said on Saturday that the results for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-polls will be announced on Sunday. Singh said that all necessary arrangements for the counting of votes for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll had been made and results will be announced tomorrow.
The bypoll, a triangular contest, was held on 11 October, and is being seen as a test of popularity for the state’s newly elected Congress government. The results will also indicate if the Am Aadmi Party has been able to recover from a below-par performance in the assembly elections.
In the assembly polls held earlier this year, Congress had won a near landslide while AAP, which was confident of sweeping the polls, was only able to win couple of dozens of seats.
The requisite arrangements and preparations were made for counting of votes of the bye-election at two counting centres, Singh said.
“The counting will start at 8 am tomorrow and the results are expected to be declared by 12 noon,” he was quoted by PTI.
The seat fell vacant following the death of BJP MP Vinod Khanna in April this year.The Congress has nominated its Punjab unit president Sunil Jakhar, a loyalist of Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, as its candidate, while the BJP has decided to field Swaran Singh Salaria as its candidate. Salaria, 58, hails from Chauhana village of Bhoa assembly segment and is a member of the BJP’s National Executive.
Salaria was recently embroiled into a a controversy after a woman alleged that she had been sexually exploited by the BJP candidate for 32 years on the pretext of marriage.