Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, in its second attempt, has taken Punjab, giving the eight-year-old party its second state after Delhi.
Addressing his party workers after Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in the Punjab polls, AAP chief and Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal said that the people of Punjab have made the impossible possible.
As per the latest information available from the Election Commission’s website, AAP is likely to win 90 out of 117 seats, much ahead of the majority mark of 59 seats.
No party in Punjab ever registered such an emphatic win in the history of its polls.
AAP’s wave was so strong that it even did not spare bigwigs like Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch and five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and former Congress chief minister Amarinder Singh who could not hold on to their respective constituencies of Lambi and Patiala.
Even SAD president Sukhbir Badal, incumbent Congress chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu have lost from their respective constituencies. Later, Sidhu resigned from his post.
“This was not a victory, it was a tsunami that swept away everyone,” said political analyst Jamshid Khan.
Bhagwant Mann all set to become next Punjab CM
AAP’s chief minister-designate Bhagwant Mann, who won with over 50,000 votes from Dhuri, in his victory speech at Sangrur thanked voters for the massive mandate to the party.
”Give me a month and you will start noticing the difference in the [welfare] delivery system,” said Mann, who announced that he would take oath as Punjab’s 17th chief minister from Khatkar Kalan, the birthplace of Shaheed Bhagat Singh in Nawanshahr district.
In his first public address in his home town Sangrur after winning the seat and seeing the meteoric rise of the party, Mann promised to fix unemployment as his first task in office.
“No government office in the state will have the photo of the Punjab CM, but will carry a portrait of B.R. Ambedkar.”
Mann said he will take oath as the Chief Minister in Bhagat Singh’s ancestral village Khatkar Kalan and not in Raj Bhawan.