Khaira group sets up panel to review AAP’S poll defeat
CHANDIGARH : In what is likely to offend the party leadership further, the AAP dissidents led by Sukhpal Singh Khaira on Friday constituted a three-member committee to go into the reasons for the party’s defeat in the 2017 elections in Punjab. The committee set up under Kharar MLA Kanwar Sandhu will have Mansa MLA Nazar Singh Manshahia and Bathinda leader Deepak Bansal as members.
CHANDIGARH: In what is likely to offend the party leadership further, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dissidents led by Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira on Friday constituted a three-member committee to go into the reasons for the party’s defeat in the 2017 assembly elections in Punjab.
The committee set up under Kharar legislator Kanwar Sandhu will have Mansa MLA Nazar Singh Manshahia and Bathinda leader Deepak Bansal as members. “The AAP looked like winning the election after the mega Maghi rally, but did not. The party also failed to carry out review of the poll debacle in the last 16 months,” said Khaira at a press conference here.
The Bholath legislator said the committee will give its report in one-and-a-half months.
Khaira, along with seven other party MLAS, had raised a banner of revolt against the AAP central and state leadership after he was removed the post of leader of opposition in the state assembly last month. AAP, which surfaced the political scene in Punjab by winning four of the 13 seats in the 2014 parliamentary polls with 25% of the votes polled, got 20 of the 117 seats in the 2017 assembly elections and is the principal opposition party in the state.
OBSERVERS APPOINTED IN ALL DISTRICTS
Khaira also announced the appointment of observers in all 22 districts and plans to hold the volunteers’ convention in Faridkot on August 22, Gurdaspur on August 25 and Moga on September
2. The first district-level volunteers’ meet will be held in Garhshankar on Saturday. “We will also go to Issru in Ludhiana on August 15 to pay tribute to Shaheed Karnail Singh Issru. These decisions were taken in the meeting of political affairs committee (PAC),” he said.
While PAC has been set up by the Khaira group after passing “resolutions” at its Bathinda convention on August 2 to “dissolve” the party’s organisational set-up in the state, these moves are not legally tenable as per experts. The AAP leadership has dismissed all these steps as “irresponsible and immature”.
On Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann’s statement that there was not provision of PAC in the party constitution, he said that the MP had probably not read the
document.
‘ON SYL, WON’T ACCEPT ANTI-PUNJAB DECISION’
Reacting to AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s statement that he would accept the decision of the Supreme Court on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, Khaira said this was exactly why they wanted autonomy for Punjab. “The convener was looking at Delhi, Haryana, but who will take care of the interests of Punjab. We will not accept any anti-punjab decision,” he said.
Sandhu, who was named by Khaira as spokesperson of the rebel faction, said the way the petition was filed, the case was bound to go against Punjab. “The state must file a fresh review petition in the court,” he said.