Thaindian News

Chandigarh, Dec 24 (IANS) The main political parties in Punjab - the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine and the opposition Congress - Saturday welcomed the Election Commission’s announcement of Jan 30 as the date for polls to the 117-member state assembly.

Punjab Congress president and former chief minister Amarinder Singh said: “Sooner the better. The Congress is upbeat about the election and will have a landslide win.”

He said that Congress workers across Punjab celebrated the announcement by bursting crackers and distributing sweets, indicating that they had already smelt victory. “It is already a festive mood in Congress,” he added.

Political parties and leaders were expecting the poll panel to hold the assembly polls around mid-February but the Jan 30 will force all of them to get into full poll mode immediately.

The Akali Dal has already taken the lead by announcing its first list of 48 candidates Friday, including that of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Badal also welcomed the announcement of poll schedule, saying: “Everything has gone as we wished. I am really happy and thrilled as if this was my first election. The political atmosphere in the state today indicates that this will be the biggest victory of my career for the SAD and the BJP. We are set to go past even the 1997 results.”

Badal said the Akali Dal-BJP alliance will contest the elections on the development plank as Punjab saw a lot of development in every field in the last nearly five years of the alliance rule.

Declaring that the alliance would come back to power, Badal said: “The negative Congress campaign of mudslinging, abuses and violent idiom will backfire on them. People want to know what their leaders have done for them and what they will do in future. There is no place for gutter propaganda which the Congress was hoping to rely on.”

Akali Dal spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said the Congress should be prepared for a defeat in the forthcoming elections.

The alliance government came to power in March 2007.

In the outgoing assembly, the Akali Dal had 45 legislators and alliance partner BJP 19 (total for alliance was 64). The opposition Congress had 43 legislators while five legislators were Independents.

Five assembly seats fell vacant in the last one year after former finance minister Manpreet Badal, who was earlier with the Akali Dal, and three other legislators resigned. One legislator died earlier this year.