New Delhi: The Congress party on Wednesday (February 17) won seven municipal corporations in Punjab local body polls, bagging all the bodies at Moga, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Abohar, Pathankot, Batala, and Bathinda.
According to reports, the party won Bathinda municipal polls after 53 years, while Mohali's results will be announced on Thursday.
Notably, the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat is represented by Harsimrat Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). She recently parted ways with its long-time ally BJP following the differences over new agri laws.
Congress MLA and state finance minister, Manpreet Singh Badal, represents the Bathinda urban assembly seat. He is also a cousin of SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, making the polls a prestige battle this time.
The counting of votes 2,302 wards of seven municipal corporations and 109 municipal council-Nagar panchayats started on Wednesday morning.
The civic body elections were hotly contested by the four main political parties, namely, Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Shiromani Akali Dal, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) amid the farmers' ongoing protests over the Central government's new agri laws.
The local body polls are being considered as a 'referendum’ on the new farm laws.
As many as 9,222 candidates fought the local body election. Of these, independents form the biggest chunk with 2,832, while Congress contested the largest number of seats at 2,037. Surprisingly, the Congress party's Muktsar candidate has already won unopposed.
The BJP, which faced stiff opposition in the wake of the farm laws, fielded merely 1,003 candidates. The party contested without its Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) alliance this time, while the SAD fielded 1,569 candidates.
On Tuesday, the Punjab State Election Commission ordered deputy commissioners to appoint micro-observers for vote counting of sensitive and hypersensitive wards.
