The stage is set for high-stakes Gidderbaha bypoll, in which 1,66,731 voters will decide the fate of 14 candidates. The polling will take place at 173 polling stations from 7 am to 6 pm tomorrow and the result will be out on Saturday.
The District Election Officer has claimed that security and all other arrangements had been made. As many as 34 polling stations were declared vulnerable and the remaining 149 critical.
PCC chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring’s wife Amrita Warring is making her electoral debut as a Congress nominee from this segment. Her husband had represented the constituency for three times in a row (2012, 2017 and 2022). The election was necessitated here after Raja Warring got elected as the MP from Ludhiana earlier this year.
On the other hand, former Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who was elected as Gidderbaha MLA for four times in a row (1995, 1997, 2002 and 2007), is trying his luck in from this segment again.
Manpreet had left Gidderbaha Assembly constituency after losing election in 2012 to Raja Warring. He had won from the Bathinda Urban segment in 2017 as a Congress nominee and became a Finance Minister again, but lost on the same seat by 63,581 votes to AAP candidate Jagroop Singh Gill in 2022.
A leading transporter, Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon, who was earlier a kitchen committee member of SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and lost two elections in a row as an SAD nominee in 2017 and 2022, is contesting on the AAP ticket this time. Dimpy had left the SAD on August 25 claiming that Sukhbir was not declaring him the party candidate and was colluding with BJP leader Manpreet Badal. Thereafter, he joined AAP on August 28.
The SAD (Amritsar) has fielded Sukhraj Singh Niamiwala, son of Behbal Kalan firing victim Krishan Bhagwan Singh.
During the last Lok Sabha elections, 1,17,005 votes were polled in this Assembly segment and the maximum 32,423 were polled by Independent candidate Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, who won the election. The AAP candidate got 20,310 votes, the Congress 20,273, the SAD 19,791 and the BJP 14,850 votes. In the 2022 state elections, 1,43,885 votes were polled and Warring had got the maximum 50,998, while SAD’s Dimpy received 49,649 and AAP’s Pritpal Sharma 38,881.