Punjab is set to witness a key Assembly bypoll for Jalandhar West on Wednesday.
AAP chief minister Bhagwant Mann has shifted with his family to Jalandhar in a bid to retain the seat where his party’s MLA Sheetal Angural defected to the BJP in March after the Lok Sabha polls were declared. The bypoll is being seen as a test of the public mandate for theAAP which won only three of the state’s 13 parliamentary constituencies just less than two years after it swept 92 of the 117 Assembly seats.
Mann’s predecessor Charanjit Channi won the Lok Sabha polls from Jalandhar, and the Congress led from the Jalandhar West segment. Both seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes.
The BJP came second in the segment gaining both Hindu and Dalit Sikh voters. Although the BJP did not win any parliamentary constituencies, it bagged a record 18.56 per cent of the votes in the state despite the resentment it faced because of its failed attempt to corporatise agriculture with three new laws.
