Key seats to watch out for in Punjab

Chandigarh, Mar 16 (PTI) The Congress won eight of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab in 2019, leaving the remaining five to the BJP, Shiromani Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party. But that was before the AAP scored a landslide victory in the assembly polls in 2022. These are the seats to watch out for now.

* Ludhiana: A major industrial centre in Punjab, Ludhiana was used to contests between the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal. But in the last two elections, the runners-up to the Congress winner Ravneet Singh Bittu have been the Lok Insaaf Party and the Aam Aadmi Party. A former leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Bittu is the grandson of Punjab’s slain chief minister Beant Singh.

* Amritsar: In 2019, the BJP fielded Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri from Amritsar, the holiest city for the Sikh faith. But Puri lost by one lakh votes to Congress MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla. The party had failed similarly in 2014 to get stalwart Arun Jaitley elected from the seat. Former chief minister Amarinder Singh, now with the BJP, and cricketer-turned-politician have also held the seat in the past.

* Gurdaspur: Gadar 2′ hero Sunny Deol is the BJP MP from this border constituency, where the party has also fielded actor Vinod Khanna in the past. In the 2019 elections, Deol defeated Congress candidate Sunil Jakhar, who now heads the BJP’s Punjab unit. Opposition parties have often raked up Deol’s “absence” from his constituency.