AAP upbeat after twin victories in Visavadar, Ludhiana West by-elections : 'Terrific comeback'

AAP's Visavadar candidate Gopal Italia with Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and party convener Arvind Kejriwal. (Image: X/@Gopal_Italia)

The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday received a major shot in the arm with its candidates registering comprehensive victories in the Visavadar (Gujarat) and Ludhiana West (Punjab) Assembly seats where by-elections were held recently.

According to the data shared by the Election Commission of India, AAP candidate Sanjeev Arora was on track to win the Ludhiana West Assembly seat by a margin of over 10,000 votes against his rivals -- Bharat Bhushan Ashu of the Congress and Jiwan Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

As per EC data, 35,179 votes were polled in favour of the AAP candidate against 24,542 votes for the Congress and 20,323 of the BJP after 14 rounds of counting. The seat was previously held by AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi who passed away in January this year.

Arora's victory potentially paves the way for AAP's national convener Arvind Kejriwal's entry into Parliament. Arora is a Rajya Sabha member who was picked by the AAP to contest the by-election from the seat. His victory now creates a vacancy that Kejriwal may fill.

"The massive victory in Punjab and Gujarat proved that people in Punjab have faith in the 'politics of work' of the Aam Aadmi Party and there is a wave of change in Gujarat. Now Aam Aadmi Party is planting its flag even in the stronghold of Modi ji and BJP," the AAP said in a post on X.

The victory also comes a boost to the party ahead of the Assembly elections in Punjab in 2027. Following the party's defeat in the Delhi Assembly elections earlier this year, Punjab remains the party's sole bastion. The significance that the party had attached to the seat can be gauged from the fact that AAP's entire leadership was camping in Ludhiana, a seat with a largely urban population, for the election.

Elsewhere in Gujarat, AAP candidate Gopal Italia was leading against his nearest rival, Kirit Patel of the BJP by a margin of over 17,500 votes. While 75, 942 votes were polled in the AAP candidate's favour, the BJP could manage to secure 58,388 votes while Nitin Ranpariya of the Congress received only 5,500 votes, showed EC data after 21 rounds of counting.

Despite its near-total dominance in the state, the BJP has not won the Visavadar seat since 2007. Its hopes of breaking the jinx of breaking the 18-year jinx this time were dashed as AAP registered a massive victory from the seat.

In the last Assembly election in 2022, AAP's Bhupendra Bhayani defeated BJP's Harshad Ribadiya, a Congress turncoat and former MLA, by 7,063 votes.

"Many thanks to the people of Visavadar, Bhensan and Junagadh villages for choosing the politics of work of Aam Aadmi Party," AAP Gujarat said in a note of gratitude to voters on its X handle.

Delhi AAP president and former minister Saurabh Bharadwaj termed the result a terrific comeback for the party after the Delhi elections.

"This is a massive victory for AAP. Political analysts were saying that AAP would finish as a party. But after the loss in Delhi, AAP is winning Ludhiana West (Assembly by-elections) and we are also winning a by-election in AAP's stronghold of Gujarat by a huge margin. I think this is a major victory. A few people used to say that Arvind Kejriwal would be sidelined in national politics; this is a terrific bounce back," Bharadwaj told news agency ANI.

The BJP, which has 161 MLAs in the 182-member Assembly, retained the Kadi seat with Rajendrakumar Daneshwar Chavda winning the seat by a margin of 39,452 votes against his nearest rival, Rameshbhai Chavda of the Congress party.