The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab for the first time without its traditional alliance partner BJP since 1996 and missing its widely popular patriarch Prakash Singh Badal, appears to be unsure of its ground. Its most successful face in the last three elections has not found a place in the first list of seven candidates announced by the party on the auspicious occasion of Baisakhi.
In the first list, the party has not named a candidate from Bathinda Lok Sabha constituency from where former Union minister and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal has been proving its trump card in the last three elections since 2009.
The list was posted on X by senior party leader and former cabinet minister Daljit Singh Cheema, who himself is going to contest for the first time from the border constituency of Gurdaspur in which his native village Cheema falls.
The others named are:
- Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra from Anandpur Sahib
- NK Sharma from Patiala
- Anil Joshi from Amritsar
- Bikramjit Singh Khalsa from Fatehgarh Sahib
- Rajwinder Singh (grandson of late senior leader Gurdev Singh Badal) from Faridkot
- Iqbal Singh Jhoonda from Sangrur
The party has fielded candidates from the border constituencies of Amritsar and Gurdaspur, which have traditionally been reserved for the saffron party as part of the alliance.
From Amritsar constituency, the grand old Sikh panthic party is trying to play the Hindu card, by giving the ticket to former BJP cabinet minister in the alliance Anil Joshi, who had been expelled by the saffron party for demanding the repeal of the three controversial farm laws in defiance of the party’s then strong stand in favour of the new legislations.
He had later joined the SAD and is currently a member of the party’s core committee and incharge of Amritsar Lok Sabha. In his candidature, the party also appears to be seeking to woo the agitating farmers, in whose favour Joshi had defied his then party line.
He will face up to ruling AAP candidate Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, a minister in the Bhagwant Singh Mann cabinet, and former Indian Ambassador to the USA Taranjeet Singh Sandhu, who has been fielded by the BJP.
Former cabinet minister and an MBBS doctor by training, Dr Daljit Singh Cheema, nominated by the party from Gurdaspur, is learnt to have been keen on contesting from Anandpur Sahib constituency, in which he represented the Rupnagar assembly seat from 2012-2017. He remained Education Minister in the Prakash Singh Badal cabinet during this period.
When he was Political Advisor (in the rank of cabinet minister) to Prakash Singh Badal in his earlier tenure as Chief Minister from 2007-2012, he had unsuccessfully contested the Anandpur Sahib Lok Sabha seat in 2009, losing to first time Congress candidate Ravneet Singh Bittu, grandson of assassinated Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.
The only other candidate fielded by any of the other major parties for the seat so far is Dinesh Singh ‘Babbu’ of the BJP.
Another party bigwig Prem Singh Chandumajra is again the party pick from Anandpur Sahib, from where the former cabinet minister and three-time MP had lost the 2019 lok sabha elections to Congress candidate and former Union minister Manish Tewari. He had represented the constituency in the previous lok sabha term from 2014-2019 after defeating Congress stalwart and former Union minister Ambika Soni.
His first and second short-lived terms in the lok sabha were from Patiala constituency which he represented from 1996-1998 and again from 1998-1999 during years of political turmoil in the country necessitating repeated elections.
Other major political parties are yet to name their nominees from this seat.
Well known realtor, two-time MLA from Dera Bassi and former Chief Parliamentary Secretary Narinder Kumar Sharma is the party candidate from Patiala Lok Sabha constituency. He faces an uphill task, being up against Congress turned BJP four-time MP and former Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s wife Preneet Kaur and ruling AAP candidate and Punjab health minister Dr Balbir Singh. The Congress is yet to field a candidate from the constituency but the name of former AAP MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi, who recently joined the Congress, is doing the rounds.
The Prime Minister asserted that the people of the state, and the youth especially, have proved them wrong. With the demolition of the wall that Article 370 was, which for six decades differentiated Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of the country, all sections of the people in the state are now happily benefitting from their rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. The state has since then witnessed a transformational change with the return of peace and tranquility and the engine of development reaching to all parts of the territory.
Modi reminded the gathering that successive “weak” Congress governments at the Centre had been keeping the construction of the Shahpur Kandi dam project on the Ravi river on the J&K-Punjab border pending, allowing the excess waters of the river flow wastefully into Pakistan. By completing the dam his government has ensured that thousands of farmers in the Kathua and Samba areas will be benefitted by irrigation facilities accruing from the dam, besides providing additional electricity to the territory.
He took to ‘X’ and strangely posted on his personal handle informing that “Parampal Kaur’s resignation as IAS officer has not been accepted by the Punjab government.” Literally mocking her he said “the way you were in a hurry to become IAS .. there are certain procedures for leaving it .. please understand the way to submit the resignation .. lest all the life’s earnings get into peril..”
A former Deputy Speaker of the Punjab Legislative Assembly, ex-Chief Parliamentary Secretary and three-time MLA from Sujanpur constituency (2007-2022), Dinesh Singh ‘Babbu’ belongs to Manwal village, Pathankot and comes from a Suriyavanshi Rajput Barswal/Barsal family. In the last assembly elections in 2022, he lost to Naresh Puri of the Indian National Congress (INC).
Born in Shafipur village, near Jalandhar, renowned Punjabi folk and Sufi singer, Hans Raj Hans (Padma Shri), has been moved from North West Delhi seat, which he won as a BJP candidate in 2019, to Faridkot (SC).
Preneet Kaur, wife of two-time chief minister of Punjab as also state Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh, remained Union minister of state in the Manmohan Singh council of ministers during his second term as Prime Minister. Besides being the sitting MP from Patiala, she has represented the constituency thrice before in 1999, 2004 and 2009 as a Congress candidate. After losing the elections in 2014, she made a comeback in 2019.
Grandson of assassinated Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh during terrorism in Punjab, Ravneet Singh ‘Bittu’, besides being the sitting MP from Ludhiana, has been MP twice earlier – first from Anandpur Sahib and then Ludhiana. He too recently quit the Congress and joined the BJP.
A former Congress MLA from Jalandhar West, Sushil Kumar ‘Rinku’ was lured into the AAP fold and fielded as the party candidate in the by polls to the Jalandhar (SC) Lok Sabha seat, necessitated by the death of Congress MP Santosh Singh Chaudhary, which he won by a margin of 58,000+ votes in 2023. Despite getting a repeat party ticket from the same constituency, ‘Rinku’ preferred to shift his allegiance to the BJP within a year of joining AAP, and was promptly adopted as the party candidate from Jalandhar (SC).