Ahead of LS polls, Bajwa, Jakhar to slug it out over Gurdaspur seat
CHANDIGARH : Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, a Congress versus Congress contest is on for the Gurdaspur seat. Punjab Congress chief and Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar has thrown down the gauntlet by declaring he would like to re-contest from the seat he won in October 2017 bypoll after it fell vacant following the death of actor and BJP MP Vinod Khanna.
But Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, who won the seat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls by defeating Khanna but lost to him in 2014, too has dug in his heels. “Gurdaspur is my family’s karambhoomi; I would meet Congress president Rahul Gandhi next week to stake my family’s claim. Rahul would field whom he deems fit. The final decision rests with him,” Bajwa says.
Jakhar contends that Gurdaspur is his only choice. “I don’t intend to contest from anywhere else. But it is up to Rahul Gandhi to field me from there or not,” he said.
The odds are stacked in favour of Jakhar. He won the bypoll with a record margin of over 1.9 lakh votes and has been nurturing the constituency. He also cites the “one family, one ticket” rule coined by the Congress during the 2017 Punjab assembly elections to buttress his claim. “The rule will apply in the Lok Sabha elections too,” Jakhar says.
While Bajwa is a Rajya Sabha MP, his younger brother Fateh Jang Bajwa is a Congress MLA from family pocket borough, Qadian, in Gurdaspur.
Also, Gurdaspur is seen as a Hindu seat with strong Jat Sikh local leaders who can pull votes. The state cabinet has three ministers from the district and Jakhar’s landslide victory against the BJP largely came from constituencies of Jat Sikh ministers Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and Tript Rajinder Bajwa, both staunch Bajwa baiters and Jakhar loyalists. Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh too has no love lost for Bajwa.
Bajwa had opposed Jakhar’s candidature for the bypoll saying the seat was promised by Amarinder and Congress general secretary in-charge for Punjab Asha Kumari to his wife Charanjit Kaur, who left the Qadian seat won by her for Fateh in the 2017 state polls.
Bajwa came around and supported Jakhar’s campaign later, purportedly on some assurance from the party.
The Congress has since dumped the “one family, one ticket” rule. In Himachal polls, both former CM Virbhadra Singh and his son, Vikramaditya, bagged tickets. In Madhya Pradesh too, the party fielded former CM Digvijaya Singh’s brother Laxman Singh as well as his son Jaivardhan Singh. To keep political dynasties at bay, Congress insiders say the party may tweak it to “one MP, one MLA” rule to ensure Amarinder’s wife Preneet Kaur, a three-time MP and former union minister, bags the Patiala ticket.
But Bajwa is making his case on grounds that two brothers constitute two separate families.
The Congress had fielded two sons of powerful Chaudhary clan of Doaba in the state polls. Jalandhar MP Santokh Chaudhary’s son Vikram Chaudhary and Surinder, son of Santokh’s brother and former Punjab minister, late Chaudhary Jagjit Singh.
The party also gave tickets to two grandsons of former CM Beant Singh, Ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu, who lost from Jalalabad, and his cousin, Gurkirat Kotli, who won from Khanna the second time.
The Jakhar-Bajwa rivalry goes back to latter’s days as state Congress chief. As Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader, Jakhar had supported Amarinder’s relentless war to replace Bajwa. Finally, both Bajwa and Jakhar were asked to quit in November 2015 ahead of the state polls. Bajwa was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2016 ignoring a similar claim by Jakhar. During the state polls, Jakhar also lost from his bastion, Abohar, but was resurrected as state Congress chief.