Dr Gandhi from Patiala; Aujla & Amar Singh retained from Amritsar & Fatehgarh Sahib
The Indian National Congress (INC) has finally named its candidates for six of the 13 Lok Sabha seats from Punjab which is going to the polls in the final phase of the 2024 elections on June 1.
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The six have found their names in another list of 10 candidates from Delhi, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh released by the party late on Sunday.
The candidates named for Punjab seats
- Amritsar – Gurjeet Singh Aujla
- Jalandhar (SC) – Chranjit Singh Channi
- Fatehgarh Sahib (SC) – Dr Amar Singh
- Bathinda – Jeet Mohinder Singh Sidhu
- Sangrur – Sukhpal Singh Khaira
- Patiala – Dr Dharam Vira Gandhi
The party has retained its sitting MPs Gurjeet Singh Aujla and Dr Amar Singh from Amritsar and Fatehgarh Sahib (SC) constituencies, respectively. Former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi has expectedly been fielded from Jalandhar (SC) seat and firebrand party MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, on bail in a 2015 drug haul case, from Sangrur.
There is a special significance attached to Khaira being fielded from Sangrur. He and AAP chief minister of Punjab Bhagwant Singh Mann, who represented the constituency twice in the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2022 before quitting the seat midway through the second term to contest the 2022 assembly elections in the state, have been involved in a long and bitter running battle of words. In giving him its ticket from the constituency, the Congress appears to be seeking to send a strong message to Mann.
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Khaira has been a three time MLA from Bholath. He began his political career with the Congress and later moved to the AAP in 2015. He remained AAP’s Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly for a year during 2017-18 before being suspended by the party for alleged anti-party activities.
In January 2019, he resigned from the primary membership of the party and floated a new political party Punjab Ekta Party. The same year he resigned from his assembly seat and contested the Lok Sabha elections from Bathinda as a candidate of the Punjab Democratic Alliance. He however lost the election.
He was welcomed back into the Congress fold in June 2021 by then Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh at the height of the leadership crisis besetting the latter. Khaira brought with him two rebel AAP MLAs Jagdev Singh Kamalu and Pirmal Singh Khalsa ahead of the 2022 assembly elections in the state. He again won the Bholath seat on the Congress ticket.
From Bathinda, the party has placed its faith on four-time MLA from Talwandi Sabo Jeet Mohinder Singh Sidhu, who quit the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) after being suspended for alleged anti-party activities, and returned to the Congress in October 2023.
In Patiala, former AAP MP and cardiologist Dr Dharam Vira Gandhi, who joined the Congress recently, has been given the party ticket. The party’s four-time MP from this constituency and former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s wife Preneet Kaur had recently quit the party and joined her husband in the BJP. She is now the saffron party’s candidate for the June 1 elections. Dr Gandhi as an AAP candidate had defeated then incumbent Preneet Kaur in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by over 20,000 votes.
He was made the AAP parliamentary party leader, but sacked in April 2021 when he spoke out against the expulsion of senior leaders like Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan from the party’s National Executive and later from the party. He was at that time replaced by party’s national convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s loyalist Bhagwant Singh Mann, the current chief minister of Punjab.
He had later quit the party and launched an outfit of his own called ‘Punjab Manch’. He unsuccessfully contested the 2019 lok sabha elections from the constituency as an Nawan Punjab Party (NPP) candidate, finishing third behind Preneet Kaur of the Congress and Surjit Singh Rakhra of SAD.
