4-time ex-Cong MLA joins AAP, ready to forgo 3-term pensions

Setting a precedent in Haryana, the former minister and four-time Congress MLA Nirmal Singh, who joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) two days ago, announced to forgo his pensions for three terms on the lines of Punjab AAP legislators here on Saturday.

Notably, the AAP government in Punjab last month announced that all the MLAs would get the pension for one term and not for each term served by them as was the practice in the past.

Singh who along with his daughter Chitra, also a former Congress leader, joined the AAP in Delhi on Thursday and also merged his Haryana Democratic Front (HDF) with AAP, announced he would take pension for only one term and not for all the four terms, here at a press conference in presence of Delhi MLA Sushil Gupta, Haryana in-charge of AAP.

The father-daughter duo had left the Congress after the denial of tickets in the 2019 assembly poll. Anguished, both quit the Congress

and floated HDF and contested as independent candidates against the BJP candidates.

Gupta said the AAP members joined politics to do the politics of sacrifices.

Meanwhile, even the AAP focus appeared to be on pollbound Himachal and Gujarat after its landslide win in Punjab last month, it has nonetheless also been making inroads into Haryana, if the joining of various leaders of different parties in the past month is any indication.

A few days ago, former Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who switched over to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in November last year, joined the AAP in the presence of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. The former Sirsa MP Tanwar had the Congress ahead of the 2019 Haryana assembly poll after bitter differences with former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Tanwar, a Dalit leader, considered to be close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched his own Apna Bharat Morcha in February 2021 and later, in November, joined the Trinamool.