Down-to-wire contest as lead swings through counting in Chandigarh

As the counting of votes began at 8 am on Tuesday, it was being considered a close fight with Congress’ Manish Tewari expected to be gaining from colonies and BJP’s Sanjay Tandon from city sectors.

But the fight that finished by only 2,504 votes margin, the lowest-ever, almost never saw an area going in favour of a single candidate. The highest margin set down in a round of counting was recorded at only 10,000 votes as the nail-biting contest traversed through 15 rounds of counting at Chandigarh College of Engineering and Technology, Sector 26. The counting continued till 4 pm.

Out of the total 4,48,547 polled votes in Chandigarh, Tewari got 2,16,657 votes whereas Tandon got 2,14,153 votes. Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were fighting this election in alliance.

Tewari started his lead with 739 votes in the first round of counting, while the leading margin increased to 5,340 votes in the third round. In the first three rounds, the votes of colonies and villages, which are a stronghold of the Congress and AAP, were counted, thus giving an edge to Tewari.

In the fourth round, Tandon got more votes and the winning margin of Tewari saw a slight dip to 5,027 votes. Following this, Tewari continued his lead till seven rounds while the margin had grown to 10,485 votes.

From the round eight, which included counting of sectoral areas, the winning margin started dipping for Tewari and till round 14, the margin narrowed to just 3,689 votes. The last round of the counting remained a nail-biting as it was further reduced to 2,504 votes.

This was Tandon’s debutant election after two time-MP Kirron Kher, who fought from the seat on the BJP ticket in 2014 and 2019, opted out. Tandon, son of former Punjab minister and RSS veteran, Balram Ji Das Tandon, remained the city’s BJP chief for a decade.

In 2019, the BJP had won this seat with a lead of 46,000 votes against Congress’ Pawan Kumar Bansal, who was replaced by Congress and shifted Tewari from Ludhiana to Chandigarh.

Earlier, poll percentage in Chandigarh saw a fall of two percent in June 1 elections. Only 68 percent votes were polled against 70.6 percent in 2019 and 73.7 percent in 2014.

Result delayed by around 5 hours

After completion of 15 rounds of counting around 3 pm, the election department had first declared the lead for Tewari by 3,613 votes. Soon after this, Tewari, local unit chief HS Lucky and Tandon went inside the counting centre.

With Tandon raising objections to the result, the final result for the Chandigarh seat was delayed by five hours and was only declared around 7.40 pm.

As per party workers, Tandon showed his dissatisfaction over the result and a narrow margin and had raised objections over a few EVMs. Tandon was also demanding recounting of votes.

For around five hours, the party workers of both the BJP and Congress stood outside the counting centre and raised slogans against each other. Already accepting the victory, the Congress workers feared foul and raised slogans “Is BJP waiting for Anil Masih to invalid votes”. The BJP workers on the other hand, were astonished by the narrow margin and were not ready to accept the defeat.

The final result was declared and Tewari was announced winner by 2,504 votes.

“The counting process was completed by 4.30 pm with counting of slips of five randomly selected VVPAT. Thereafter, a representation was received from Sanjay Tandon for recount of few EVMs. He was shown all election documents and the counting process was duly explained to him. On this, he expressed his satisfaction and recount was not required,” said deputy commissioner-cum-UT’s returning officer Vinay Pratap Singh.

Support in colonies helped us win: Congress

The Congress workers, who were counting agents for their candidate and were present inside the counting room, said Tewari won by a significant margin in most of the colonies and erstwhile villages, as compared to sectoral areas.

“We gain a massive lead from Dadumajra, Maloya, Mauli Jagran, Khuda Jassu, Khuda Alisher and a few sectors, including 25, 27, 28, 29. We also maintained lead in other colonies but Tandon got more votes from EWS societies, Behlana, Daria, Manimajra and northern sectors,” said Congress leader Gurpreet Singh Gabi.

The election department, however, is yet to release the votes polled in favour of each candidate from various areas of the city.