Independent candidate Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, son of Beant Singh, one of the assassins of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, leads the polls in Faridkot, in India's Punjab.
After nine rounds of counting in the border constituency, Sarabjeet got 49,439 votes, while his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) competitor Karamjit Singh Anmol followed with 29,927 votes. Hindustan Times reported.
Rajwinder Singh Dharamkot of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) received 20,824 votes and Amarjit Kaur Sahoke of Congress got 20,441 votes, while Hans Raj Hans of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trailed with 11,182 votes.
Khalsa is the son of Beant Singh, one of Indira Gandhi's bodyguards who murdered her.
During the campaign, Sarabjeet's Sikh-centric speech struck a chord with the rural-dominated border electorate and gained momentum with roadshows and election rallies in the final stretch.
He would stir up Sikh sentiments by reminding the audience how his father had murdered Indira Gandhi to avenge the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984.
Sikh leaders and relatives of victims of the 2015 post-sacrilege police dismissal lent their support and campaigned for him.
Earlier, his mother Bimal Kaur Khalsa had won the Lok Sabha elections from Ropar and his grandfather Sucha Singh had won the elections from the Bathinda parliamentary constituency in 1989 as a candidate of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar).
He has significant support in five of the nine assembly segments in the Faridkot parliamentary constituency: Dharamkot, Baghapurana, Gidderbaha, Jaitu and Faridkot.
