All these three assembly seat of Gidderbaha, Chabbewal and Dera Baba Nanak won the congress in the 2022 assembly elections and now they fell into the kitty of AAP in these by-polls.Congress candidate Kuldeep Singh Dhillon won the Barnala assembly segment, defeating Harinder Singh Dhaliwal of AAP by a margin of 2,157 votes. While the Barnala assembly seat was earlier with AAP as it was won by Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer twice, now Hayer is the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Sangrur.Sources said that the Punjab Congress president, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring attributed the party’s loss to the absence of SAD candidates and now these by-election results would have implications not only for Raja Warring whose wife, Amrita Warring, lost in Gidderbaha but also for senior leader and Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Randhawa, whose wife Jatinder Kaur lost in Dera Baba Nanak.It is learnt that the criticism is mounting against Warring as a section of party leaders are suggesting that, after being elected as MP from Ludhiana he should hand over the state leadership to someone else. As AAP won three seats from the Congress, taking its tally in the 117-member Assembly to 94, the Congress is now 17 MLAs in the assembly.In all four by-poll seats, the contest was between AAP and Congress as the BJP trailed at the third spot in every seat despite putting up strong candidates, none was able to make an impact. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), however, did not contest these by-polls.
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