Both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Punjab, it seems, do not believe in the maxim “Early bird gets its prey”. While the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has already announced their candidates in a bid to grab parliamentary seats, there is no clarity in both, the Congress and the BJP, over the names.
As of now, as the SAD has announced its candidates on all 10 seats it contest in alliance with the BJP, the saffron party is yet to come out with the candidates’ names it wanted to field from the rest of the three seats — Amritsar, Gurdaspur, and Hoshiarpur.
Similar is the case with the Congress. Even as the party has announced the names of its four candidates in the State, it is yet to take the final call on the seats where it has Union Ministers as sitting MPs.
The Congress party has, till now, announced the candidature of three sitting MPs, out of the eight in its first list. As the Union Cabinet has three Ministers from Punjab, the party has announced the candidature of only one — Union Minister of State for External Affairs Perneet Kaur from Patiala.
Besides the three-time Patiala MP, leaders from Punjab Congress’ youth brigades — Ravneet Singh Bittu and Vijay Inder Singla — has been re-nominated from their constituencies — Sri Anandpur Sahib and Sangrur, respectively.
The party’s first list of four candidates for Punjab throw many surprises as it left out the big names of Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari — ludhiana MP, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Santosh Chowdhary — Hoshiarpur MP, besides the State Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa — Gurdaspur MP.
It has been learnt that party is looking for Chowdhary’s replacement, while the name of Punjab Youth Congress chief Vikram Singh Chaudhary is doing the rounds for Jalandhar seat. Sources maintained that the party sitting Jalandhar MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee may be shifted to Hoshiarpur. Congress’ sitting MP from Fatehgarh Sahib Sukhdev Singh libra is expected to get the ticket again.
Even though the Congress has joined hands with the People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) for fielding former Finance Minister Manpreet Badal from Bathinda, the formal announcement is awaited.
Manpreet, in recent political developments, has tied up with the Congress to contest from Bathinda parliamentary seat against his sister-in-law and local MP Harsimrat Badal in the ensuing lok Sabha polls — a decision which has not gone down well with his close aide and comedian-turned-politician Bhagwant Mann, besides many others in the Congress too.
As an upshot, while Mann joined the Aam Aadmi Party, Congress’ sitting MlA from Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda district joined the SAD.
The situation is no different in BJP. To declare sitting Amritsar MP Navjot Singh Sidhu “out” or not — that is the question haunting the BJP top brass.
Albeit the not-so-friendly parliamentary match is less than two months away, the selectors in the BJP are not too sure on including his name in the team from Amritsar seat.
Indisputably, former cricketer Sidhu’s name has been figuring in the list of probables and the party is still finding it hard to ignore him. But, a section of selectors want him as an “extra” rather than key player after taking into consideration his “poor performance” and discord with Akalis in the five-year match.
To sort it out, the BJP high command had a meeting with Sidhu — party’s lone MP from Punjab — on Friday in New Delhi asking him to contest polls from the national capital — an offer reportedly turned down by him. Moreover, Sidhu has already made it clear that he would contest lok Sabha elections from Amritsar parliamentary seat only.
Sidhu has been the party’s “star campaigner”, and denying ticket to party’s lone MP from state may send wrong signals. What is more, Sidhu’s assertion that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was not in favour of him contesting from Amritsar, and BJP high command cannot field any candidate without Badal's consent may drive the saffron party to announce his candidature.
On the other hand, Sidhu’s strained relations with not only the SAD, but also with some of the BJP leaders, coupled with his long absence from the constituency, unkept promises, and low winning margin in 2009 parliamentary polls may go against him.
As his replacement, the names of senior BJP leader Arun Jaitely, the State party president Kamal Sharma, and state vice-president Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhinna were doing the rounds.
In Gurdaspur, the party seemed to have finalised on the name of actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna, while party’s senior leader and Mumbai-based industrialist Swaran Salaria is also projecting himself as candidate.
Khanna, who had won the seat thrice but lost in 2009 polls to Bajwa, is expected to be the lone choice for the seat, and is already campaigning on his end. The name of educationist and vice-chancellor of Sri Sai University SK Punj is also under consideration.
Chief Parliamentary Secretary (CPS) and sitting MlA from Phagwara Som Parkash is the front-runner for the reserved Hoshiarpur seat. Other than him, the name of Punjab State Forest Development Corporation chairman Vijay Sampla, and the party’s state unit chief of the SC Morcha Dilbag Rai has been added in the panel sent to the party high command. Parkash, in 2009, contested from Hoshiarpur and lost by a small margin of 366 votes to Congress’ Santosh Chowdhary.