Congress fails to win single seat in 9 of Punjab's 17 districts

The Congress failed to win a single seat in nine of Punjab's 17 districts. It managed just one seat each in four other districts.

In these nine districts -- where 63 seats were at stake -- the Congress lost to the Akali Dal in 23 seats, and to the BJP in ten constituencies. In the 30 other seats in these districts, the Congress trailed the winner and runner-up by large margins.

The Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine swept all nine seats in Firozepur, ten out of 11 seats in Gurdaspur, all five seats in Ropar, 15 of 16 seats in Amritsar, all four in Muktsar, two of four in Mansa, all eight seats in Patiala and two of three in Nawan Shahar district.

The Congress won its remaining ten seats in the three districts of Jalandhar (4), Ludhiana (3) and Sangrur (3).

In six Punjab assembly seats, the margin of victory was less than 1,000 with the lowest, 53, being recorded in Dasuya.

The BJP's Mahant Ram Parkash lost the Dasuya seat to his Congress rival Ramesh Chander in the election held to constitute the eleventh state assembly.

The BJP (Avinash Khanna) also lost the Gahrshankar seat by a margin of 800 votes to the Bahujan Samaj Party's Singara Ram. The Congress lost four seats -- Ajnala, Rajpura, Nur Mahal and Bagha Purana --by less than 1,500 votes.

The highest victory margin was recorded in Ludhiana rural where Hira Singh Gabria of the Akali Dal defeated an independent, Jagdev Singh, by 61,000 votes.

The Akali Dal won seven seats by a margin of over 30,000 votes, while losing the Samrala seat by 1,400 votes.

A state-wide negative swing against the Congress was evident as the party lost 16 assembly seats by a margin of over 20,000 votes each.