Chandigarh: Manish Tiwari won in a close contest
Chandigarh: Congress candidate Manish Tewari wrested the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat for the Congress after a decade. He defeated BJP’s first-time candidate Sanjay Tandon, son of late RSS leader and former Chhattisgarh governor Balramji Das Tandon, by a narrow margin of 2,504 votes. Congress supporters wave flags during Manish Tewari’s victory procession in Chandigarh on Tuesday. Ravi Kumar Tiwari got 2,16,657 votes while his arch rival Tandon got 2,14,153 votes. Tiwari’s vote percentage was 48.30, while Tandon got 47.74 votes. Tiwari maintained the lead after the first round of counting and the margin increased to 10,485 votes after the seventh round. The gap reduced slightly to 10,194 in the eighth round and this trend continued till the 12th round, when the lead reduced to 4,991 votes. Meanwhile, Tiwari took a lead of 6,079 votes, which reduced to 3,689 in the 14th round. However, after the 15th round, the difference further reduced to 2,504 votes.
India Block has an upper hand in the MC House
The victory of India Block candidate Manish Tiwari will strengthen the alliance in the Municipal Corporation. MPs are ex-officio members in the House and their votes play an important role in the voting during the mayor election. For the last 10 years, the BJP had an edge due to the vote of its MP Kiran Kher. Currently, the MC House has 15 councillors from the BJP, 13 from the AAP and seven from the Congress. Now Tiwari’s vote will also be added to the alliance’s count.
The counting of votes was completed at around 3 pm, but after this there was an uproar when Tandon objected to the counting and demanded a recount. However, it took about four and a half hours for the UT Election Department to ignore Tandon’s objections and declare Tiwari the winner. During this, Congress workers raised slogans against the BJP and said that the BJP is deliberately delaying the election results on baseless issues. A handful of BJP supporters present there raised slogans in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the Congress. Supporters of both Congress and BJP reached near the counting center and raised slogans in support of their leaders. Tiwari had to work hard for victory, as he faced criticism from opponents who termed him an outsider. Apart from this, opposition from the camp of former Union Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal presented more challenges, but Tiwari overcame these obstacles and won. Congress leaders said that despite all the obstacles, the hard work of local leaders and workers helped the party win. They said that Tiwari got huge support from colonies and villages, but he got around 4,000 votes from Sector 25 Colony. He also got a good number of votes from areas like Dadu Majra, Maloya and Ram Darbar. However, he suffered a setback from Mauli Jagran, Mani Majra and Burail. Tiwari’s position was further strengthened by the support of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won 14 of the total 35 seats in the 2021 municipal corporation (MC) elections. Of the total votes, 2,912 were None Of The Above (NOTA) votes. BSP candidate Ritu Singh got the third highest 6,708 votes, followed by independent Lakhvir Singh with 2,626 votes. Another independent Kuldeep Rai got the least 114 votes. A total of 19 candidates were in the fray. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s vote share was 50.64 per cent and Congress’ 40.35 per cent. AAP’s share was a very low 3.82 per cent. Similarly, in the 2014 parliamentary elections, the BJP’s vote share was 42.20% and Congress’ 26.84%, followed by AAP’s 23.97 per cent. In both the elections, BJP’s Kiran Kher defeated Congress’ Pawan Kumar Bansal.
