Amritsar, May 26 (IANS): Outgoing Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who failed to win the Lok Sabha battle from Amritsar, termed it a privilege to forge ties with the people of the Sikh holy city with which he has a family "connect".

"I once again felt the surge of the kind of electricity that mass contact with people and the rough and tumble of ground level electioneering brings.

"But the permanent connect that I have been able to make with people of the holy city has been worth every moment of the 21 days I got to campaign in the city and its nine rural and urban 'halqas'," the diplomat-turned-politician wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

Tracing his roots, Puri, who lost to sitting Congress MP Gurjit Singh Aujla by 99,626 votes, said the election has only reiterated the connect that he had with the city.

"A connect established by my grandfather Sardar Sujan Singh who was wounded in the Jallianwala Bagh carnage in 1919 and later by my father who sought refuge in Guru Nagri after he took the last Frontier Mail from Lahore to escape the ravages of partition."

Remembering his experience as a first-time politician, Puri said: "The welcoming smiles, the warm hospitality, the brotherly embraces, the enthusiastic handshakes, youngsters touching my feet...and those thousands of selfies (the digital age expression of affection!) clearly communicated that the people (not politicians) of Amritsar never looked at me as an outsider."

"Elections come and go but I want to assure every 'karyakarta' and every citizen of Sri Amritsar Sahib, that the bond we now have will be everlasting and permanent. I will keep coming back home to Amritsar to be with them. I am as much a part of their lives as they are of mine," he added.