Poll violence in six municipal councils of Punjab’s Ludhiana district.

Ludhiana: Ludhiana: Violence in Tuesday’s Punjab municipal elections left a Congress candidate with injured limbs at Raikot and a cameraman stabbed in Jagraon after a Congress sympathiser confronted an AAP MLA.The violence flared across six municipal councils in the Ludhiana district, where intense political friction overshadowed voter turnout.In Raikot, attackers injured the arms and legs of Congress candidate Jagdev Singh Jagga on Tuesday morning. Local Congress official Kamil Amar Singh alleged that the loyalists of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator from the seat, Hakam Thekedar, had orchestrated the targeted assault to sabotage voting.Jagga was moved to Dayanand Medical College and Hospital in Ludhiana. Superintendent of police Murad Jasvir Singh confirmed the candidate’s condition had since improved. In a twist, police said Jagga himself was an accused in a separate local brawl reported the previous evening. Police raids are on without any arrests, so far.Meanwhile, in Jagraon, a heated argument outside the School of Eminence polling booth escalated into a knife attack.Sukhwinder Singh Sidhu, a local social media commentator and Congress sympathiser, confronted the seat’s AAP legislator, Sarvjit Kaur Manuke, objecting to her presence inside the polling compound. Shortly after police intervened to separate the two, a gang of youths arrived in an SUV and ambushed Sidhu and his cameraman, Gurveer Singh Virk.In the melee, Sidhu’s turban was knocked off and Virk was stabbed. Sidhu publicly accused Manuke of ordering the hit.Speaking to local media, Manuke denied the allegation, claiming Sidhu had hurled verbal abuses at her but she had stayed calm.Former state minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu led a street protest for the Congress over the stabbing incident. He alleged that AAP-MLA-backed contestants had police support to intimidate the voters and hijack the process.Similar political hostility was reported in Khanna, where police had to intervene outside a polling station to break up an aggressive shouting match between the Congress and AAP workers.