With just a day left for filing of nominations, Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on Sunday declared its senior leader Rajesh Bagga and the businessman-cum-politician Jangi Lal Mahajan as its candidates for the by-polls to Phagwara and Mukerian Assembly segments, respectively.
Bagga, who has served as the chairman of the Punjab State Scheduled Caste Commission during the previous SAD-BJP Government, was facing strong competition from the Union Minister and former MLA Som Parkash who was eyeing party ticket for his wife Anita and also, former Union Minister and former state BJP president Vijay Sampla who was vying for ticket for his son Sahil.
Mahajan, a businessman, had unsuccessfully contested as an independent candidate from Mukerian assembly seat during 2017 State Assembly elections, and bagged 20,542 votes.
At that time, the then Punjab BJP president Vijay Sampla had expelled Mahajan from the party for six years for contesting as an independent candidate against BJP candidate Arunesh Shakir, who also lost to the Congress candidate Rajneesh Kumar Babbi.
Punjab’s total four assembly segments are going for by-elections on October 21, along with the assembly elections in the neighbouring Haryana and bypolls in Himachal Pradesh.
In Punjab, BJP contests elections in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal. As per the seat sharing arrangement between the two, BJP would contest on Phagwara and Mukerian while SAD would contest Dakha and Jalalabad.
Phagwara’s previous MLA, Som Parkash, was elected to the Parliament in May and is currently the Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. Mukerian seat fell vacant after sitting Congress MLA Rajnish Kumar Babbi’s death the previous month.
SAD’s Manpreet Singh Ayali will be the alliance’s candidate for Dakha, while Raj Singh Dibbipura will be the candidate for Jalalabad, which fell vacant after Akali Dal president Sukhbir Badal resigned from the Punjab Assembly following his election to the Lok Sabha from Ferozepur. Dakha fell vacant as senior Supreme Court lawyer and AAP MLA HS Phoolka resigned.
With BJP also declaring its candidates, the four segments are set to witness a quadrilateral contest. However, the candidates fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party and the Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA) are unlikely to make any impact on the poll campaigns of the other two prominent parties — SAD-BJP combine and the ruling Congress.
From Phagwara assembly seat, BJP’s Bagga will face Congress’ Balwinder Singh Dhaliwal and AAP’s Santosh Kumar. A former IAS officer, Dhaliwal had resigned from the post of director land records, Jalandhar, on September 23 to contests elections, while Santosh Kumar had been an AAP volunteer and an RTI activist.
Considering that the party has a stronghold over the seat in the parliamentary elections too, the BJP state leadership is hopeful of retaining the seat. During the assembly elections in 2017, Som Parkash had got 35.02 percent votes while the Congress candidate Joginder Singh Mann bagged the second place with 33.48 percent votes.
On Mukerian seat, BJP’s Mahajan would face Congress candidate Indu Bala and AAP’s Gurdhian Singh Multani. Indu Bala is the widow of former Congress MLA from Mukerian Rajnish Kumar Babbi and Multani had been a former College lecturer and now running schools.
LAST DAY FOR FILING NOMINATIONS TODAY
September 30 is expected to be a busy day for the poll officials in Punjab as majority of candidates for the four by-elections would be filing their nominations on Monday — which is the last day for submitting the papers.
So far, just six candidates have filed their papers for Dakha and Jalalabad constituencies till September 27. Till now, no nomination paper has been filed for Phagwara and Mukerian.
For Dakha, SAD’s Manpreet Singh Ayali and Harkiner Singh, while AAP’s Amandeep Singh and Gurpreet Kaur Thind have filed their nomination papers. Jai Parkash Jain, a comedy artist popularly known as ‘Teetu Baniya’, has also submitted his papers for Dakha as an independent candidate.
Congress rebel and youth leader Jagdeep Singh Kamboj ‘Goldy’ had also filed his nomination papers for Jalalabad.
Monday would see all the four Congress candidates — Raminder Singh Awla from Jalalabad, Capt Sandeep Singh Sandhu from Dakha, Balwinder Singh Dhaliwal from Phagwara and Indu Bala from Mukerian filing their nominations.
Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh would be accompanying Congress’ Dhaka and Jalalabad candidates for filing of their nominations, while All India Congress Committee’s senior leader and the party’s Punjab affairs in-charge Asha Kumari would be accompanying Phagwara and Mukerian candidates.
