Today (July 10) marks the polling day for the Jalandhar West bye-elections 2024. The seat was vacated after the resignation of BJP candidate, Sheetal Angural. People are enthusiastically casting their vote to elect the candidate of their choice. By 9 am, 10.30% voting has taken place in Jalandhar West legislative assembly seat. Voters were also being given plants after they had cast their vote. There is live webcasting at the polling booths which is being monitored by the Jalandhar DC Dr. Himanshu Aggarwal at the control centre so that the elections are fair and peaceful. Voting started at 7 am and will continue until 6 pm.
Talking about the candidates, former MLA Sheetal Angural from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former BJP minister, Chunni Lal Bhagat’s, son Mohinder Bhagat from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and former senior deputy mayor Surinder Kaur from Congress are contesting. In 2022, AAP’s Sheetal Angural had won the elections with 33.73% of the votes while Mohinder Bhagat, who was contesting for BJP at the time, came third at 28.81% of the votes, behind Congress’ Sushil Rinku. SAD had put up Surjit Kaur as their candidate who was embroiled in controversy after making two quick party changes, from SAD to AAP and then back to SAD again.
The specialty of this seat is that every election sees a new party winning the seat. BJP won the seat from here in 2012, Congress in 2017 and AAP in 2022. AAP had won the seat by contesting with Sheetal Angural as their candidate, who switched party just before the Lok Sabha elections in March and resigned as the MLA.
A total of 1,71,963 voters are registered in the constituency and 181 polling booths have been set up.