EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
CHANDIGARH, March 2: Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Satya Pal Jain was today re-elected from the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat. Jain won by a margin of 10,366 votes from his nearest rival, Pawan Kumar Bansal of Congress. While Jain polled 1,19,787 votes, Bansal was a close second with 1,09,421.
Trailing far behind with 41,195 votes, former Union minister Harmohan Dhawan of the Samajwadi Janata Party lost his security deposit after he failed to garner the required one-sixth of the total votes polled.
Of the total of 18 candidates in the fray, 16 of them lost their security deposits.
Amar Singh Chahal of the Samajwadi Party polled 4,552 votes, Independent Sajjan Singh 2,374 votes and Bimla of the Bahujan Samaj Party (Ambedkar) 1,026 votes. The rest of the contestants failed to reach even the three-figure mark. Sunil Saini of the ABP could poll only 959 votes.
In the last election, Bansal was behind Jain by a margin of about 25,000 votes.
Jain was leading right from the first round of counting and thetrend continued right through, with Jain consolidating his position from a lead of about 2,700 votes in the first round.
A new method of counting was adopted for the Chandigarh seat, after the Election Commission selected it as one of the four such constituencies, which resulted in accurate availability of election trends.
Once the lead reached the 10,000-figure, jubilant supporters of Jain started gathering at his residence in Sector 15. The lead, which at one time touched 13,000, was reduced in the last round.
Since the lead was being maintained right from the start, BJP and Akali supporters felt the vote was clearly in their favour. Making a beeline for Jain's residence, his supporters got together and garlanded him. Sweets were distributed even when the counting for the last few rounds was yet to be taken up, much before the official declaration of the result.
The "saffron-band" later took to the roads as BJP and SAD supporters gathered outside the office of the Deputy Commissioner, where theresult was officially declared.
They later took out a procession, amidst slogan-shouting.
