Punjab Local Body Results 2025 LIVE: SAD Makes Big Rural Comeback, AAP–Congress in Tight Fight.

Punjab Civic Polls LIVE: SAD Surges; AAP, Congress Locked in Three-Way Battle.

Counting for the Punjab Zila Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections is underway on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, with early trends pointing to an intensely competitive three-cornered contest between the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress. After a prolonged slump, SAD appears to be staging a strong comeback in the rural heartland, registering key victories in Attari and Majitha and leading in 12 of 14 seats in Malout. In a major symbolic upset, a SAD candidate also won from Sandhwan, the native village of Punjab Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan, dealing an early blow to AAP.

Meanwhile, AAP and Congress remain locked in a neck-and-neck fight for second place across several districts. AAP is holding ground in Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s home district of Sangrur, where it is leading in 62 of 162 Block Samiti zones, while Congress has taken an early edge in Hoshiarpur, winning six of the first nine declared zones.

Patiala has emerged as a key battleground, with AAP leading in 32 zones, Congress in 19 and SAD in seven. The elections, held on December 14 and seen as a “semi-final” ahead of the 2027 Assembly polls, cover 347 Zila Parishad seats across 22 districts and 2,838 Panchayat Samiti zones in 153 blocks, with a voter turnout of around 48%.

Results are expected to trickle in slowly due to ballot-paper counting and the large number of candidates, while opposition parties SAD and Congress have alleged electoral malpractices and obstruction of their counting agents in some districts, including Patiala.