AAP had 1,80,352 votes till 11 AM
New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party is leading ahead in Jalandhar's four-cornered Lok Sabha by-poll, the latest counting of votes showed.
Sushil Kumar Rinku, a former Congress MLA from the Jalandhar West constituency in the previous assembly who joined AAP, is ahead of Congress's Karamjit Kaur, the wife of Santokh Chaudhary, whose death during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, over 40,000 votes.
AAP had, as of 11 am, 1,80,352 votes, as it steadily widened the gap with Congress which had 1,46,047 votes.
BJP was third with 93,813 votes, and the Akali-BSP came in fourth place with 84,850 votes. More than half of the total votes have been counted.
BJP has fielded Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, a Dalit Sikh, who quit the Shiromani Akali Dal to join the saffron party. Shiromani Akali Dal's Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi is being backed by the BSP.
The Jalandhar seat fell vacant after the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary. He suffered a cardiac arrest during the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra in Jalandhar's Phillaur in January this year.
On Saturday, 13 May 2023, counting for four assembly seats, Suar and Chhanbey in UP, Jharsuguda in Odisha, and Sohiong in Meghalaya was also being held along with the one Lok Sabha seat in Punjab.
While Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party is ahead in Mirzapur district's Chhanbey with 54.6 percent votes, and BJP-ally Apna Dal is in second position with 35.5, it's the opposite in Suar, where Apna Dal so far has 57.1 percent votes, and the Samajwadi Party 39.5 percent.
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