New Delhi, Feb 7 (IANS) Despite the hype created around the party in the 2017 Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party had fallen way behind the Congress when results were announced. It looks all set to turn the tables in the current elections.
According to a CVoter-ABP News opinion poll released on Monday evening, the AAP is set to win Punjab with a wafer-thin majority while the Congress appears to be way behind, with the Akali Dalled alliance and the BJP-led alliance in collaboration with former Congress chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh trail behind the two leading contenders.
According to the final results of the poll, the AAP is projected to win between a range of 55 to 63 seats - the upper end of the range ensuring a majority for the party for the first time.
The Congress which recently announced the state's first Dalit Chief Minister as their CM candidate seems to be too far behind a majority with a projection of between 24 to 30 seats.
The alliance with the BSP doesn't seem to have helped the Akali Dal which ruled Punjab in alliance with the BJP between 2007 and 2017. The alliance is projected to win between 20 to 26 seats in the elections.
The BJP-led alliance is nowhere in the picture, projected to win between 3 to 11 seats.
If the findings of the opinion poll hold true when results are declared on March 10, analysts blame the intense infighting within the Congress that seems set to offer Punjab on a platter to AAP. Again, if the polls turn out to be close to actual results, Arvind Kejriwal would be on his way to a role in national politics.
Chidambaram was addressing a press conference at the fag-end of his two-day visit to the state in the capacity as the All India Congress Committee's senior observer in charge of Goa ahead of the 2022 state assembly polls.
Punjab annually generates 20 million tonnes of paddy straw and this is normally set on fire to quickly clear the fields for the next crop, resulting in choking of the National Capital Region (NCR) in October and November.
Priyanka's remarks came after farmers on Tuesday evening vacated the railway tracks and highways in Punjab after the Amarinder Singh government accepted the demands of the sugarcane farmers.
The 'rebel' legislators reached Dehradun in the morning to apprise Rawat about the mood of the public against the Amarinder Singh-led government in the state. They, among 20-odd party legislators, have been demanding replacement of Amarinder Singh as he failed to fulfill the 2017 poll promises.
Rao also slammed Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for raking up 10-year-old allegations related to the mining scam in an attempt to put Congress leaders in the dock in pollbound Goa.
According to the customs department, one male passenger aged 27 years, flew in from Dubai by Emirates flight EK-544 was intercepted at exit gate and his baggage which were found to be unusually heavy were subjected for detailed examination.
