“Outsider” Jakhar polled maximum votes in all Assembly segments of Gurdaspur seat
By Raju William/Vijay Pal Brar
Gurdaspur, October 15, 2017: Gurdaspur voters are not averse to vote for “outsider” as they have, for long, been telling this to the world. They elected late Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna, also an "outsider" four times from this parliamentary constituency touching India-Pakistan border since 1998.
And they showed it once again by voting decisively in favour of the Congress candidate Sunil Jakhar whose home constituency is Abohar in Fazilka district. The rivals led by BJP-SAD tried to stick the "outsider" tag on him but failed miserably.
Besides massive overall victory margin of 1,93,219 votes, there is one significant factor that proves this. And that is voters of all the nine Assembly segments of this parliamentary constituency preferred "outsider" Jakhar to "son of the soil" BJP-SAD candidate Swaran Salaria.
The verdict in this bypoll can be called decisive also in the sense that Jakhar gained the lead right from the start of counting of votes in all Assembly segments and maintained it right till the end. It showed voters’ absolute clarity about who they thought should represent them in the Parliament this time. Only three years ago, they had preferred Vinod Khanna of the BJP.
Of all the Assembly segments, the lead of 44,074 was the highest in Dera Baba Nanak represented by Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa of Congress in Punjab Vidhan Sabha. The breakup of lead that Jakhar got in all the segments is a clear pointer of how much ground BJP-SAD combine lost in entire Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency in voters’ eyes. It would be interesting to know detailed observations of political analysts into various factors responsible for BJP-SAD including Modi factor.
The breakup of Jakhar’s lead in all the nine Assembly segments is as follows:
Dera Baba Nanak-44074 votes, Fatehgarh Churian-32,296, Kadian-26,348, Gurdaspur-29,656, Batala-26,255, Sujanpur-6701, Bhoa-7796, Pathankot-8710 and Dinanagar-11,387 votes.