Sushil Rinku of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bye election.
Rinku defeated his nearest rival and Congress nominee Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary by a margin of 58,691 votes.
Rinku polled 3,02,279 votes while Chaudhary secured 2,43,588, as per Election Commission data.
Jalandhar bypoll was necessitated following the death of Karamjit Kaur's husband and sitting Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary in January.
Rinku has become the sole MP of the AAP in Lok Sabha. Earlier, Punjab Chief Minster Bhagwant Mann had been the Lok Sabha MP in 2014 and 2019, but, after the AAP stormed to power in Punjab in the 2022 assembly polls, he vacated the Sangrur parliamentary seat. The Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) had won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat bypoll last year.
Rinku had joined the AAP after quitting the Congress in the run up to the bypoll.
Rinku is a Dalit and has a good support base in his community.
Rinku began his political career as a municipal corporation councillor. He became the MLA on the Congress ticket in 2017. However, he tasted defeat in the 2022 assembly polls by the hands of AAP candidate Sheetal Angural.
During campaigning for the Jalandhar bypoll, Rinku had spoken about free electricity, mohalla clinics and other issues to woo voters.
(With PTI inputs)
