Ruling AAP wins 41 wards in Ludhiana MC polls but falls short of a majority; wives of MLAs face defeats

The voting for the 95-member Ludhiana MC general house was held earlier in the day and remained largely peaceful with a turnout of 46.95 per cent — way lower than 59.08 per cent in the 2018 MC polls.

Prominent wins, defeats

In a major embarrassment for the ruling AAP, wives of its two sitting MLAs faced crushing defeats.

Besides them, the wife of a former Congress minister lost, too.

The BJP which contested its first solo civic election in Ludhiana after parting ways with ex-ally SAD, got a major boost with its candidate Poonam Ratra defeating AAP’s Meenu Prashar, the wife of AAP MLA from Ludhiana Central Ashok Prashar Pappi, by a margin of 574 votes from ward no 77.However, Pappi’s brother Rakesh Parashar, a former Congress leader and five-time councillor, won from ward number 90, defeating the BJP candidate by over 600 votes.

In the Lok Sabha polls held earlier this year, BJP had led in five urban assembly segments and won 66 urban wards in Ludhiana. AAP had faced a rout and failed to lead in any of the nine assembly segments despite having its MLAs. Pappi, who was the AAP candidate in the Lok Sabha elections, had finished third in Ludhiana after the Congress and the BJP.

AAP’s Dr Sukhchain Bassi, wife of its Ludhiana West MLA Gurpreet Gogi, lost to Congress’s Parminder Kaur by 86 votes from ward number 61, despite Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann holding a roadshow in Gogi’s constituency on the last day of campaigning, rallying support for Bassi. Gogi had opened a front against his own government for its failure to clean polluted Buddha Nullah and even demolished the foundation stone of the cleaning project laid by the AAP government.

Sukhchain Bassi, wife of AAP MLA Gurpreet Gogi, also lost. (Express)

Parminder Kaur is the wife of Inderjit Indi, a close aide of former Congress minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu. Indi was arrested, along with Ashu, by the vigilance in the alleged multi-crore foodgrain scam, but the High Court recently quashed the FIR.

However, AAP Ludhiana North MLA Madan Lal Bagga’s son Aman Bagga Khurana won ward number 94 defeating Congress’s Resham Singh by 887 votes and AAP Atam Nagar MLA Kulwant Singh Sidhu’s son Yuvraj Singh Sidhu won ward number 50 defeating the Congress candidate by over 1,900 votes.

The Congress also got mixed results in the LMC elections.

Former Congress minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu’s wife Mamta, a three-time councillor, lost ward number 60 to AAP’s Gurpreet Singh by 168 votes.

Mamta Ashu, wife of former Congress minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu, lost. (Express)

Leena Sharma, wife of Ashu’s cousin Narinder Kala, a two-time former councillor, also lost to AAP’s Nandini Jairath by 195 votes.

Former senior deputy mayor Sham Sunder Malhotra of the Congress again won from ward number 84, defeating the BJP candidate by over 600 votes.

Former Congress MLA Surinder Dawar’s daughter-in-law Shalu Dawar won from ward number 85 by over 600 votes.

Deepika Bhalla, wife of former councillor Gagandeep Sunny Bhalla, an Ashu’s close aide who was also questioned in the alleged foodgrain scam, won ward number 69, defeating BJP’s Mala Dhanda by over 1,700 votes.

Opposition parties question low turnout

Calling the MC elections under the AAP government as “highly mismanaged and unfair”, Sanjay Talwar, Congress’s president for urban Ludhiana, said: “Several governments came and went but these were the most mismanaged elections ever. They were held in the most unfair manner. The names of voters from several colonies were altogether missing from voter lists to help ruling AAP win. Despite such high handedness of AAP, we have won 30 wards and the ruling party has failed to win majority. The reason why such low voter turnout has been witnessed is due to missing names from voter lists.”

Parveen Bansal, senior BJP leader and former district president, said: “The voter lists were manipulated to such an extent that hundreds of people could not even vote. Can AAP government explain how merely 46 per cent voters came out? Where did the rest go? Such low turnout indicates how voter lists were manipulated and names of voters were missing. Even the candidates of opposition parties were not given voter lists till the last day. The ruling AAP misused police and administrative machinery to win 41 wards. Despite all this, we have won 19 seats which is a big victory for BJP in its first solo civic election.”

2018 results

The Ludhiana MC elections were due since more than a year after the previous House completed its term in March 2023.

In 2018, Congress had won 62 of 95 wards, while SAD-BJP had emerged as the main opposition winning 21 seats together. The AAP had contested the 2018 polls in alliance with Lok Insaaf Party (LIP) and together they had won 8 seats, of which AAP had won just one. Congress’s Balkar Singh Sandhu was elected the Mayor in 2018. In 2012, SAD-BJP had won majority.