Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will “officially” hand over the party reigns to its most popular and the crowd-puller leader Bhagwant Mann in Punjab ahead the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Mann, who was the AAP’s state unit president, but later submitted his resignation protesting against the party supremo and Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s infamous apology to SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia.
All this while, AAP’s Punjab unit was virtually headless. AAP’s state core committee has recently turned down Mann’s resignation which he submitted in March 2018, and forwarded its decision to the
National Political Affairs Committee (PAC) for review last week.
Party spokesperson said that Mann would formally be installed as party’s Punjab unit chief in Chandigarh on Wednesday at a simple ceremony in the presence of state’s party affairs in-charge and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Munish Sisodia.
Among others who are likely to be a part of the installation ceremony include, besides others, MLAs, members of state core committee, state executive committee and officials from party’s various wings.
A comedian-turned-politician, Mann had defeated the stalwarts of Congress and Akali Dal in Sangrur Lok Sabha Constituency with the highest margin in the state during 2014 elections of more than two lakh votes. Mann had defeated SAD’s Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Congress sitting MP Vijay Inder Singla, bagging 5,33,237 — 51.46 percent of the total votes polled.
AAP has already declared Mann’s candidature from Sangrur to seek re-election. AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal, in a massive rally at Barnala recently, heaped praises on his Sangrur MP, and projected Mann as the face of the party while playing up his declaration to “quit drinking” as his “sacrifice for Punjab”.
Mann, during his first term as MP, has hit the headlines, most of the times for the wrong reasons. Be it attending the Parliament in high spirits, live streaming of House proceedings on Facebook, or being forced to leave a religious ceremony at Bargari village after he arrived drunk, Mann has emerged as the controversy’s favourite child in these five years.
Despite all that, he had remained a real crowd-puller for the party.