Chandigarh, March 11 (IANS): The Congress was heading for a big win in the bypoll to the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat on Saturday with a lead of over 1.5 lakh votes, a poll official said.

Congress candidate Gurjeet Singh Aujla, a youth leader, was ahead of his BJP rival Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina by nearly 1.55 lakh votes, the official said here.

The bypoll was necessitated after the seat was vacated in November 2016 by Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh following the Supreme Court verdict on a presidential reference on the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal issue.

Amarinder Singh had won the seat in the 2014 general elections in a high-profile contest against Bharatiya Janata Party's Arun Jaitley, who is at present the Union Finance Minister, by over one lakh votes.

The vote margin this time over for Congress candidate is bigger than in 2014.

The Congress was also surging ahead in counting of votes polled for assembly elections, winning 31 seats and leading in 46 more out of the 117 seats.