Patiala, June 4 - Dr. Dharamvir Gandhi of Congress has won the prestigious Lok Sabha seat of Patiala. He defeated his nearest rival Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate and Cabinet Minister Dr. Balbir Singh by a margin of 14831 votes. This is Dr. Gandhi's second victory to the Lok Sabha. In 2014, he defeated Preneet Kaur as an AAP candidate, who was then contesting from the Congress. Dr. Gandhi got 305616 votes while Dr. Balbir Singh got 290785 votes. Voters cast 288,998 votes in favour of Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Preneet Kaur who came third. In fourth place was Shiromani Akali Dal's NK Sharma who got 153978 votes. Sharma got the highest number of 33748 votes from Dera Bassi Assembly constituency. Under the guidance of District Election Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner Patiala Shaukat Ahmed Pare, the counting of votes started at 8 am with smooth functioning and there was no difficulty during the entire process. This time the contest on Patiala seat was very tough and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had to come to campaign in this prestigious parliamentary constituency. Earlier it seemed that the main contest on this seat would be between Congress and AAP, but BJP candidate Preneet Kaur made a good presence and left her full impact.