Amit Bathla
Tribune News Service
Panchkula, December 30
The first round of counting began on a positive note for Congress' mayoral candidate Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia, who took early leads over BJP's Kulbhushan Goyal.
She was expecting a similar trend in her favour in rounds to come. But to her surprise, Goyal registered a comeback in the very next round, reducing the already minimal marginal lead to 5-odd votes.
After taking a narrow lead by reversing the trend in the third round, the BJP's mayoral nominee didn't look back from there.
At the end of the sixth round of counting, Goyal's margin over his nearest rival Ahluwalia was already over 1,000 votes.
He continued to consolidate his lead in the ensuing rounds, giving no chance to Ahluwalia to bring down the rapidly rising gap of votes.
On the completion of the eighth round, Ahluwalia was trailing behind by a margin of almost 2,200 votes. The BJP took a big leap in the next two rounds and its mayoral candidate's lead reached over 3,300.
As the counting progressed, BJP's Goyal maintained his lead round after round. It was the 17th round when the BJP started smelling the victory.
Though the Congress still had hopes from EVMs from villages, it was indeed a herculean task to cover high-margin lead.
As 22nd round began, the Congress showed signs of recovery, but it came too little too late. In the last 10 rounds of counting, Ahluwalia managed to bring down the difference of votes between her and Goyal. However, she could only do so up to 2,057 votes and Goyal sealed the victory after the completion of 32 rounds of counting.
While Goyal polled 49,860 votes, Ahluwalia got 47,803 votes.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/382iEBD
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