The election is scheduled on July 10 and the campaigning will end on July 8.

The ruling AAP, which managed just three seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, has made it a prestige battle to retain this seat. After all, it was the resignation of its former MLA Sheetal Angural, who is now a BJP candidate, which necessitated this bypoll. Mann has been actively campaigning for party candidate Mohinder Bhagat and has rented accommodation in Jalandhar. He has promised the voters that he will spend 3-4 days per week here to address the grievances of the people of the Doaba region, besides hinting at a ministerial berth for Bhagat if he wins.

While Mann has been canvassing in full throttle, nearly all of the party’s 85 MLAs, including cabinet ministers, and three MPs have been present on the ground campaigning for Bhagat.

Congress on the other hand is looking for icing on the cake after its candidate former CM Charanjit Singh Channi won the Jalandhar seat with a comfortable margin.

Channi had got a 1,557 vote lead from this constituency and a win here for its candidate Surinder Kaur, will give the party a bragging right as the main Opposition party in the state after it won seven of the 13 seats in the LS polls. Surinder Kaur has remained senior deputy mayor and is a five-time municipal councillor.

For Congress, their top senior leaders including Punjab Congress chief and Ludhiana MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa are looking after the campaign affairs. The party’s canvassing is largely focused on holding door-to-door campaigns instead of holding public rallies. The leaders, including Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Randhawa and Amritsar MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla, have also been camped here to firm up the strategies.

For BJP’s Angural a win here will justify his decision to snap ties with AAP and join the saffron party before the Parliamentary elections.

The bypoll has been necessitated by his resignation as AAP MLA, a day after he joined the BJP.

Bhojpuri movie star Dinesh Lal Yadav, famously known as Nirahua, held a public rally in favour of Angural late Friday evening, while noted Hindi and Punjabi actress Preeti Sapru held door-to-door meetings in the constituency. BJP senior leaders including state president Sunil Jakhar, national general secretary Tarun Chugh and others are camping in the city.

On the other hand, the SAD’s campaign has completely fallen flat, after party president Sukhbir Singh Badal withdrew support to Surjit Kaur, who the party had announced as its official candidate due to infighting within the party. Despite the Akali rebel group led by Jagir Kaur and former MLA Gurpartap Singh Wadala coming out in support of her, Surjit’s flip-flop kept everyone on the toes. On July 2, she joined AAP in the afternoon but was back in the Akali fold by evening.