The counting of votes for the high-stakes Ludhiana West Assembly by-election will begin at 8:00 am on Monday, following a closely contested battle that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann dubbed as one between “humility” and “arrogance.”
Held on June 19, the bypoll is seen as a litmus test for the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is attempting to consolidate its grip over Punjab. Meanwhile, the Congress hopes to reclaim the urban constituency, which it has won six times in the past.
The AAP has fielded 61-year-old Rajya Sabha MP and noted Ludhiana-based industrialist Sanjeev Arora, known for his philanthropic work, while the Congress has nominated senior leader and working president of its Punjab unit, Bharat Bhushan Ashu (51), a former minister. The BJP is represented by core committee member Jiwan Gupta, and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has fielded lawyer and former Ludhiana Bar Association president Parupkar Singh Ghuman.
Although the main battle is between AAP and Congress, the outcome will also be closely watched for signs of BJP’s performance among urban voters and as a referendum on SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s leadership, as the party strives to recover from a string of electoral setbacks.
The by-election was necessitated by the death of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January. The seat recorded 51.33 per cent voter turnout—considerably lower than the 64 per cent turnout in the 2022 Assembly polls. Fourteen candidates were in the fray.
Tight security arrangements have been put in place at Khalsa College for Women, the designated counting centre, officials confirmed on Sunday.
A win would be significant for AAP, which suffered a poor performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections, managing only three of 13 seats in Punjab. The party is also reeling from setbacks in the Delhi Assembly elections earlier this year. However, in November last year, it managed to win three out of four Assembly bypolls held elsewhere in the country.
During the campaign, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal had promised a cabinet berth for Arora if elected. CM Mann repeatedly pitched the contest as a moral fight between Arora’s “simplicity” and Ashu’s “arrogance.” In the 2022 Assembly polls, Ashu lost this seat to Gogi by a margin of 7,512 votes.
The Congress, as the principal opposition party in Punjab, is also under pressure to perform well. A victory could help it regain ground in Ludhiana, a former stronghold. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP's Ravneet Singh Bittu led from the Ludhiana West assembly segment, which is part of the Ludhiana parliamentary seat. However, he lost to Congress nominee Amrinder Singh Raja Warring.
For the SAD, the bypoll outcome will test the leadership mettle of Sukhbir Singh Badal, who returned as party president in April after resigning in the wake of religious censure by the Akal Takht. He personally led the campaign for SAD candidate Ghuman.
In the 117-member Punjab assembly, the AAP has 94 legislators, the Congress has 16 MLAs, the Shiromani Akali Dal has three, the BJP two, and the Bahujan Samaj Party one. One seat is held by an Independent.
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