With Sangrur Defeat, AAP Left with No MP in LS; SP's Tally Hits New Low as it Loses Strongholds in Bypoll

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) suffered major setback in the by-elections on Sunday with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party reducing to a zero in Lok Sabha while Akhilesh Yadav’s party reaching a new low in the Parliament.

The AAP lost the Sangrur parliamentary seat vacated by Bhagwant Singh Mann when he became Punjab chief minister to SAD (Amritsar) president and Khalistan’ proponent Simranjit Singh Mann. Mann, 77, who returns to Parliament after two decades, defeated the Aam Aadmi Party’s Gurmail Singh by a margin of 5,822 votes. Mann polled 2,53,154 votes, while Singh got 2,47,332, according to the Election Commission figures.

For the AAP, the humiliating defeat comes just three months after it registered a landslide victory in the 2022 assembly elections, winning 92 of the 117 assembly constituencies. The recent murder of popular singer Sidhu Moosewala is being seen as one of the factors. CM Bhagwant Mann himself has won from Sangrur parliamentary constituency twice — in 2014 and 2019. His recent win was from Dhuri, an assembly segment in the same Lok Sabha constituency.

Answering a TV reporter’s question on his victory, Simranjit Mann recalled the death of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and others during Operation Blue Star at Amritsar’s Golden Temple in 1984. Mann had quit the Indian Police Service in protest over the Army operation to flush out militants from the shrine. The Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) president had last won the same seat in 1999. His earlier parliamentary victory was in 1989 from Tarn Taran, when he created a row insisting that he should be allowed entry into the House with a sword, saying this was a Sikh’s right.

The BJP wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in an embarrassment to the opposition SP. With the loss on the two seats, the party has just three members in the lower house of Parliament and reached its all-time low in the Lok Sabha.

The Samajwadi Party was considered to be influential in Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats, which were vacated by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and party stalwart Azam Khan after they were elected to the Assembly this year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the BJP victory as “historic”, asserting that this indicates wide-scale acceptance and support for the “double engine” governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh, a reference to the party being in power in both places.

Ruling candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi won the Rampur parliamentary seat by a margin of over 42,000 votes. He defeated Mohd Asim Raja, considered close to Azam Khan. In Azamgarh, BJP candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ defeated Dharmendra Yadav by a margin of 8,679 votes. Dharmendra is a cousin of Akhilesh Yadav and a three-time MP.

With this loss, the party has not only suffered setback ahead of the Lok Sabha election in 2024, but also suffered criticism from criticism party members and alliance partner. Om Prakash Rajbhar, the chief of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, had cricised Akhilesh for staying in “AC rooms and not venturing out in the sun”.

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