Campaign ends for high-stakes Ludhiana West bypoll, 14 in fray
The campaigning for the high-stakes Ludhiana West Assembly bypoll came to an end at 6 pm on Tuesday, with candidates now shifting focus to door-to-door outreach in their final push to woo voters.
A total of 14 candidates are in the fray for the June 19 byelection, necessitated after the passing of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January. A total of 1,74,437 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise — 89,602 of them male, 84,825 female and 10 third gender. As many as 194 polling stations have been set up while the counting will take place on June 23.
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has fielded Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora while the main opposition Congress has bet on its state unit working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu. BJP’s Jiwan Gupta and Shiromani Akali Dal’s Paropkar Singh Ghumman are among other prominent candidates.
The last day of campaigning witnessed roadshows by various parties, leading to traffic snarls in various parts of Ludhiana. The police held a flag march to maintain order and display its preparedness.
The ruling AAP has been banking on its three-year performance in Punjab and Arora’s work as a member of the Upper House.
The Congress and the Akali Dal have been calling for change, targeting the ruling regime over “rising unemployment, the distress in the farming, trade and industrial sectors; drug menace, inflation, sacrilege, deteriorating law and order situation and unfulfilled poll promises”. The BJP is harping on its 11-year rule at the Centre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “charisma” and the success of Operation Sindoor.
In the 2022 Assembly poll, AAP’s first-timer Gogi had won the Ludhiana West seat by defeating his nearest rival and Congress heavyweight Ashu by 7,512 votes. Ashu, then a sitting MLA and also a minister in the Congress government, had won the seat consecutively in 2017 and 2012, but lost to his friend-turned-foe Gogi in 2022. In the 2024 parliamentary election, Ludhiana West had voted for BJP’s Ravneet Singh Bittu even as Congress nominee Amrinder Singh Raja Warring emerged as the winner from the Ludhiana Lok Sabha segment.
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