The ruling Congress won six municipal corporations and emerged as the largest party in the seventh, sweeping the urban body polls in Punjab on Wednesday.
The party bagged Moga, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Abohar, Pathankot, Batala and Bathinda municipal corporations.
The results for the eighth corporation, Mohali, will be announced on Thursday as the Punjab state election commission (SEC) ordered repolling in two wards, which took place on Wednesday.
In Bathinda, the Congress bagged the municipal corporation after 53 years. Party leader and the state’s Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal tweeted saying that “history” had been made in the city.
The results came as a setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party amid the farmers’ protest against the Narendra Modi government’s new three agricultural laws.
In Pathankot, a BJP stronghold, the Congress won 23 out of 50 wards.
“The drumming that SAD, BJP, and AAP have received in these civic polls is just the tip of the iceberg, and all three are set to be wiped out of Punjab’s political arena, and subsequently from the nation’s political landscape, in the months ahead,” Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said in a Congress statement.
Singh said, “With these results, all these parties have got a foretaste of things to come in the Assembly elections, due just a year from now.”
The Punjab unit of the Congress took a dig at the other contesting parties over the results. “This is a tight slap on the face of BJP, SAD and AAP by people of Punjab for playing with the feelings of our anndaatas [farmers],” it tweeted, referring to the farm law protests.
In the final count till now, the Congress had won 1,199 of the 1,815 wards (municipal councils) and 281 of the 350 municipal corporation seats, with the SAD trailing at 289 and 33, respectively. The BJP had 38 and 20 while the AAP 57 and nine. The remaining went largely to independents and others.
