Continuing its winning spree in Punjab, the Congress party has registered its fourth consecutive win, after coming to power in the State in March last year, by sweeping ludhiana Municipal Corporation elections with 65 per cent seat share.

Ending the SAD-BJP's 10-year-long rule on the State's biggest corporation, the ruling Congress has secured 62 out of 95 wards, prompting the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh to describe this as vindication of his Government's policies.

 “Congratulations to all @INCPunjab workers for leading the party to a sweeping victory, winning 62 out of 95 seats, in the #ludhiana MC polls. The results are a further vindication of our programmes and policies, it reflects the confidence of the people in our government,” tweeted Capt Amarinder.

With this, Congress would have its Mayor in all the four municipal corporations-Amritsar, Patiala, Jalandhar and ludhiana.

All the main Opposition parties, that accused the ruling party of bogus voting and booth capturing, struggled to touch the double digit figure with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) managing to secure 11 wards out of 55 it contested, while its ally, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), winning 10 seats out of 47.

The lok Insaaf Party (lIP), which is considered to be the main challenger to the ruling Congress considering the popularity and stronghold of Bains Brothers, suffered a major setback as it won merely seven seats out of the 59 it contested in alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) - the main Opposition party in Punjab - which won just one seat.

The only AAP candidate who won was Balwinder Kaur, wife of AAP district president Daljit Singh Grewal, from ward number 11. Remaining four seats were won by the independent candidates.

A total of 494 candidates were in fray for ludhiana civic body polls, that were held on Saturday, followed by re-polling in two booths a day before.

From the ward number 44, where repolling was conducted after differences were found in the number of votes in register and EVM, Congress candidate Harkarandeep  Singh Vaid has won the election.

While the rival parties are citing Congress' “goondaism” and misuse of official machinery as the reasons for their poor performance, the Congress is seeing it as continuance of its popular image.

AAP, which was more than confident of forming the Government in Punjab a year ago, faced another crushing defeat, despite having the support of Bains Brothers - Balwinder Singh Bains and Simarjeet Singh Bains - as its alliance partners.

Bains brothers, also MlAs from ludhiana, have a massive stronghold in the city.

Political observers are seeing AAP's another poor show as an apparent loss of its popularity in Punjab electorate, ahead the 2019 lok Sabha polls. This, at the time, when the party's senior leadership is firing one salvo after another on the state government, besides steering the exit of one of senior minister from the cabinet.

At the same time, Tuesday defeat for SAD has brought with it a major embarrassment for the party as its many prominent faces in ludhiana failed to succeed.

In ludhiana Municipal Corporation where Congress party has won a big victory, many of the Akali Dal's big giants have lost the elections. Among them are party's ludhiana urban district chief Ranjit Singh Dhillon's wife Ninderjit Kaur Dhillon, and his nephew Sukhdev Singh Sukha, Istri Akali Dal's district chief Surinder Kaur Dial's daughter Biba Navdial Singh, District Planning Board chairman Jagbir Singh Sokhi.