New Delhi: Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann, who won the Sangrur Lok Sabha bypoll, attributed his win to party workers and the pro-Khalistan pioneer Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Addressing the media on Sunday, after the Sangrur Lok Sabha bypoll results were announced, Mann said: "It's a win of our party workers and of the teachings that Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale has given.”


Mann defeated the ruling party's candidate on a Lok Sabha seat with 2,53,154 votes.






"It is a historic victory with which all the parties including BJP, Akali Dal, Congress, AAP will be perplexed because we have won after a long time. We will oppose the political parties in Parliament. Now there will be protests against us because we were mocked that we will not be able to win," he added.


“The Sikh community is very upset with the death of Deep Singh Sidhu and Sidhu Moose Wala and now the Indian government will not behave in the same way that it is behaving with the Muslims like their localities are being questioned, like the Indian Army is committing atrocities in Kashmir and killing Muslims on a daily basis,” added Mann, according to the news agency ANI.


Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a leader and political revolutionary who led a violent Pakistan-backed campaign for a separate Sikh state. Operation Blue Star in 1984 was undertaken to flush out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and other armed militants who had been hiding inside the Golden Temple premises.


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The victory of Simranjit Singh Mann comes as a major setback to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab as Sangrur is the home turf of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.


The Shiromani Akali Dal leader also stated he would raise the issues of the "killing of tribal people in Bihar and Chhattisgarh calling them Naxalites."


The leader also called for the resignation of Punjab's Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema saying, "He used to say that we will never be able to win, now he should resign because they have lost badly in their area."


He also expressed the wish that trade resumes with Pakistan via the Attari-Wagah border so that the farmers of Punjab could benefit.