Lok Sabha elections: Five legislators among 248 lose deposit in Punjab, AAP worst hit

CHANDIGARH: Two sitting MPs and three MLAs are among 248 candidates in Punjab who lost their security deposit in the Lok Sabha elections.

The five legislators were Aam Aadmi Party candidates or those who left the party and contested the elections under the banner of the Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA), a grouping of several parties.

Among political parties, the worst hit were the AAP candidates. Twelve of their candidates failed to get the one-sixth vote share needed to save the deposit.

The party's vote share in the state tanked to 7.38 per cent from around 24 per cent in the 2014 poll. Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann was the only AAP candidate who was re-elected to the Lok Sabha.

In the 2014 polls, the party had won four seats. Among the MPs whose deposit was forfeited was Nawan Punjab Party candidate from Patiala, Dharamvira Gandhi.

He was polled around 1.61 lakh votes. He was elected to the Lok Sabha on the AAP ticket in 2014. AAP's sitting Faridkot MP Sadhu Singh also lost his deposit.

He lost the contest to Congress' Mohd Sadique. AAP's Talwandi Sabo MLA Baljinder Kaur lost her security deposit from Bathinda.

Punjab Ekta Party (PEP) founder and Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, who fought from Bathinda under the banner of the PDA after quitting AAP, too lost his deposit.

PEP candidate and Jaitu MLA Baldev Singh, who contested as a PEP nominee after quitting AAP, was too among the legislators whose deposit was forfeited.

The BSP candidates from Hoshiarpur and Anandpur Sahib also failed to save their deposit, so did the CPI candidates from Amritsar and Ferozepur, CPM contestant from Anandpur Sahib and Lok Insaaf Party nominees from Bathinda and Fatehgarh Sahib.

Bir Devinder Singh, the lone candidate fielded by the SAD (Taksali), a breakaway faction of the Shiromani Akali Dal, also lost his security deposit from Anandpur Sahib.

Shiromani Akali Dal (Mann) chief Simranjit Singh Mann faced a similar fate from Sangrur. Twenty-eight candidates lost their deposit from Amritsar, the largest number among the 13 constituencies in the state.

Of the 10 sitting MPs who contested the Lok Sabha polls, five were re-elected.

They were Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Bathinda), Santokh Chaudhary (Jalandhar), Bhagwant Mann (Sangrur), Gurjeet Aujla (Amritsar) and Ravneet Singh Bittu (Ludhiana).