On the counting day for the Mohali municipal committee elections, Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) yellow flags were out in full force outside counting centres. Workers were singing victory slogans as the broom party swept ward after ward.AAP supporters celebrate outside the Phase 7 counting centre on Friday. (Ravi Kumar/HT)What had begun as an anxious morning—supporters pacing in scorching heat, garlands ready in hand—ended in running feet and tears of joy. The heat was relentless on Friday. Kids played in parks near the counting centres while their parents sweated out the wait, sunglasses on and phones glued to the results.Traffic around the venues refused to move. When leads came in, so did the bouquets. Some garlands were so large they needed six or seven people to carry them.Different wards had their own stories and drama. In Ward No. 10, four-time Independent winner Manjeet Singh Sethi, the kind of candidate who was supposed to be unbeatable, fell to AAP’s debut candidate, Sunny Singla Ahluwalia.In Ward No. 39, Sharanjeet Kaur had barely settled into her new AAP colours, switching from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just before filing her nomination, but the voters didn’t seem to mind. And in Ward No. 3, Congress’s Jaspreet Kaur, a two time sitting councillor, found out the hard way that incumbency was no shield, losing to yet another AAP’s first-timer, Gurmit Kaur.At Phase 7 community centre, Ward No. 48 turned tense. BJP district president Sanjeev Vashisht alleged that their candidate Kuldeep Singh was leading, even as AAP’s Sarabjeet Singh Samana, son of Mohali MLA Kulwant Singh, sought a recount thrice.Voices were raised and crowds gathered, but it was, by any measure, not the Vashisht camp’s day—his niece Arpita, 22, and a first-time BJP candidate in Ward No. 7, had already lost by securing just 163 votes.A few Congress candidates floated at the margins. But by evening, Mohali had spoken—in yellow flags, dhol beats, and the particular joy of people who had waited all day in the heat for the results.