E-Paper
Ferozepur in Congress’ kitty after 40 years
Congress wins Ferozepur LS seat after 40 years by a narrow margin. AAP faces significant drop in vote share. SAD stronghold weakened.
The Congress managed to regain the Ferozepur Lok Sabha seat after a gap of 40 years, defeating the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidates by the narrowest of margins. The last time the Congress won from Ferozepur was in 1985 when Gurdial Singh Dhillon, former high commissioner to Canada and former Lok Sabha speaker, was elected. From 1998 to 2019, this LS seat was with Shiromani Akali Dal.
The MP-elect Sher Singh Ghubaya won the seat by 3,242 votes, and the vote share of the four key contestants remained between 22.54% and 23.7%.
The two-time parliamentarian from a Scheduled Caste, Ghubaya, defeated his nearest rival Jagdeep Singh Kaka Brar, the AAP candidate and the sitting legislator from Muktsar.
Electorate from Kamboj, Jat Sikh, Khatri and Mazhabi Sikhs dominate the constituency, spread over Ferozepur, Fazilka and parts of Muktsar districts, and the caste calculation appears to have played a crucial role. A total of 2,66,626 votes were polled in favour of Ghubaya, whereas the runner-up Brar got 2,63,384 votes. The four-time legislator and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi was third with 2,55,097. The electoral greenhorn Nardev Singh Bobby Mann finished fourth and pocketed 2,53,645 votes.
Ghubaya recorded the maximum vote shares in Rai Sikh-dominated segments of Fazilka and Jalalabad giving him an edge. In Fazilka, Ghubaya got 46,113 votes, while Kaka Brar polled 28,479. In Jalalabad, the Congress candidate got 43,932 votes to AAP’s 35,036.
However, AAP registered a massive drop of 52% in its vote share that it consolidated in the nine assembly segments in the 2022 state elections. Election commission data reveals that the AAP polled 6,03,728 votes in the assembly segments of Ferozepur City, Ferozepur Rural, Guru Har Sahai, Jalalabad, Fazilka, Abohar, Balluana, Malout and Muktsar in 2022 state elections but 2024 its total vote count shrunk to 2,63,384 votes.
AAP took the lead only in Muktsar, a seat that Brar represents in the assembly but trailed in all other segments, including Malout, represented by Dr Baljit Kaur, a state minister.
The seat was considered a bastion for Shiromani Akali Dal. In the general elections held from 1998 to 2019, the seat was represented thrice by Zora Singh Mann, followed twice by Sher Singh Ghubaya (then with the SAD) and then Sukhbir Singh Badal in 2019.
The vote share of SAD in nine assembly segments of Ferozepur in 2022 state polls was 3,08,712 and dropped by 17% (2,53,645 votes) in 2024.
Akali candidate Mann led in the rural segments of Ferozepur Rural, Guru Har Sahai and Malout. The BJP’s Sodhi led from the Abohar and Balluana segments to finish third after rebel Congress MLA from Abohar Sandeep Jakhar canvassed openly for the BJP.
