JALANDHAR: Congress(I)’s Umrao Singh won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat rather comfortably with a margin of more than1.15 lakh votes against his immediate rival Badal group’s Kuldip Singh Wadala. Sixteen candidates including the B.J.P,’s Tandon, B.S.P.’s Lakha and Mann Dal’s Ajit Singh Bains lost their security deposits.
The Congress (I) victory came in the background of large scale complaints of irregularities and use of corrupt means by the ruling party, these complaints were heard by the chief election commissioner who had dismissed the official denial of the complaint as unconvincing. Yetthe commission did not cancel the election as it did in the Kalka constituency of neighboring Haryana.
During the 1992 election Akalis had boycotted voting and the total poll percentage was hardly 30%. This time the poll percentage despite contest by Akalis did not exceed 56%.
Chief Minister Beant Singh who was well disposed to celebrate his party’s victory was downcast due to a decision by the Congress (I) high command to issue show cause notices to his close confidants for disrupting a public rally scheduled to be addressed by union minister Arjun Singh last month. Beant Singh was expecting a big ovation in Delhi but he got a big rebuke. This was evidently done at the instance of Arjun Singh who suddenly grew in stature as soon as reports of defeats of Congress (I) poured in from all states. The Akali Dal Badal candidate Kuldip Singh Wadala secured the second position by obtaining 1.70 lakh votes as compared to Bain’s 18000 voles.
Although Badal was surprised at the outcome, his party’s status as the second party has come as a shot in the arm of the Badal leadership. Evidently Badal’s surprise should be understood in the context of massive input in terms of money and man-power put by the Badal group in the election. The group spent lakhs of rupees on newspaper advertisements and poll literature alone.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 28, 1993
