Dasuya bypoll: Development is the winner

Sukhjit Kaur Sahi (BJP+Akali) defeats Congress candidate by nearly 50,000 votes in peaceful bypoll elections with 69.7% voter turnout!!!

CHANDIGARH/DASUYA: The Bhartiya Janata Party today retained the Dasuya assembly segment with its candidate Sukhjeet Kaur Sahi defeating the Congress candidate Arun Mickey Dogra by a huge margin of about 47,432 votes. The Peoples’ Party of Punjab candidate, Bhupinder Singh Ghuman remained a distant third and lost his security deposit.

 

Sahi was polled 74,484 votes while Mickey Dogra was polled 30,000 votes. PPP Candidate Ghuman was polled 5,149 votes.

 

Nevertheless the BJP victory in the by-election was expected however the huge victory margin came as a bit surprise. The by-election had been necessitated by the death of the sitting BJP candidate and the Chief Parliamentary Secretary Amarjit Singh Sahi. The BJP fielded his wife Sukhjeet Kaur who won by a hugely comfortable margin.

 

While the victory may not have come as a surprise to the Congress, but the margin of defeat must have certainly come as a great shock. This is supposed to be a traditionally Congress belt and the party was not expected to fair that badly.

 

The Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President Capt Amarinder Singh had personally taken much interest about the by-election and spent three days for campaigning. He was scheduled to spend more but had to take off sometime because of the death of his aunt Ms Nagindra Khanna, the mother of PCC general secretary Arvind Khanna.

 

Capt Amarinder had ensured the return of Mukerian MLA Rajneesh Bubby to the party fold before the Dasuya by-election as the constituency had about 25000 votes belonging to the Chang community which mostly goes with Rajneesh Bubby’s family. Bubby is the son of Congress veteran late Dr Kewal Krishen who belonged to the same community.

 

The Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal also spent considerable time in Dasuya during the campaigning. At one stage it looked more of an Akali than the BJP campaign as the BJP leaders campaigning in the area were overshadowed by the presence of two Badals and Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, another important leader of the SAD and the ruling family.

 

Most of all the main person responsible for such a humiliating defeat is the Congress candidate Arun Dogra himself who virtually took no interest in the campaigning. He had taken defeat for granted as was noted and felt by the Congress leadership which went for campaigning in the area.

 

His miserably poor performance should make the party give a serious thought of grooming alternative leadership so that the candidate who is fielded next time in 2017 is well entrenched in the area and has a will and determination to win.