Ludhiana, June 24 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which secured over 45,000 votes from the Ludhiana West segment in the 2024 Lok Sabha Election, couldn't even hold on to half the votes in the byelection, the results for which were declared on Monday.

The party's candidate Ravneet Bittu scored an impressive 45,424 votes in the Lok Sabha election last June. Congress candidate Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, who had won the Lok Sabha seat, was a distant second in the segment with 30,889 votes.

Expecting to translate the performance into a victory in the bypoll, the party fielded heavy weights like Union ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Anurag Thakur, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, Haryana CM Nayab Saini and Punjab BJP head Sunil Jakhar in the ca...