AAP Wins Jalandhar With Huge Margin, Breaks Congress's 24-Year-Old Grip

The Aam Aadmi Party has broken Congress's 24-year grip on the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency with a thumping margin of over 58,000 votes. In a four-cornered contest, Sushil Kumar Rinku, a former Congress MLA from the Jalandhar West constituency in the previous assembly who switched to AAP, defeated his closest rival, Congress's Karamjit Kaur, the wife of Santokh Chaudhary, whose death during the Bharat Jodo Yatra necessitated the by-poll, by over 58,000 votes. This marks AAP's re-entry to the Lok Sabha. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, AAP's first Lok Sabha MP, resigned from the lower house after being elected as an MLA in the Punjab assembly elections last year. His party could, however, not retain the seat in the by-polls.