The Lok Sabha Elections voting concluded today. Punjab locals also voted for the suitable candidate in the 7th and last phase of voting. This was the first time that Punjab witnessed four-cornered elections. All the major 4 political parties namely AAP, BJP, Congress and SAD contested for elections without any alliance. This seat is very significant for all major political parties as the candidates contesting are considered close to the party conveners. In the last assembly elections that took place in the year 2019, Amritsar saw a total voting percentage of 57.07 per cent. However, this year the voting percentage is 54.02%.
The Lok Sabha seat of Amritsar is being considered as the one that will witness a major face-off. The major candidates who will be contesting elections from this seat are Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal (AAP), Taranjit Singh Sandhu (BJP), Gurmeet Aujla (Congress), and Anil Joshi (SAD). It is considered one of the biggest face-offs because all candidates enjoy a good repo among the people of Amritsar. This is after 21 years that BJP has come in elections without any alliance. For the unversed, it was in 1997 that the BJP formed an alliance with SAD and till 2019 they contested elections together. Post 2019, this was the first time that BJP and SAD contested solo in an assembly election. As per the analysis, the major fight is between Congress’s Gurmeet Aujla and AAP’s Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal.
For Kuldeep Dhaliwal what works in favour is that he is the Jaat face of Amritsar. Apart from this, Dhaliwal enjoys a good image and has a lot of support from NRIs. Also, the freebies given by AAP may add to his chances of winning. However, what can prove to be an obstacle to his winning is that Amritsar has a lot of issues like cleanliness, sanitation, lack of law and order, etc that are yet to be resolved. As these issues have not been solved till now, people have lost some trust in his working
On the other hand, Gurmeet Aujla is also a strong contender as he won the 2017 by-elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It's a traditional seat of Congress. What most likely will not work in his favour is that there was an internal fight going on in the party after he was selected as the contesting candidate. Due to this, he didn’t receive much support from party members. Amritsar has in total of 1676 polling stations. The constituency consists of 8,36,966 males, 7,56,820 females and 60 transgenders making a total of 1593846 voters.