SoUl of ‘PUl-Wala Khanna’ sMiling in gUrdasPUr

The central BJP leadership is at a loss over the massive defeat in Punjab’s Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll. Congress candidate Sunil Jakhar defeated his nearest rival, BJP nominee Swaran Salaria, an industrialist, with a margin of 193,219 votes. There was infighting in the BJP but how does one explain such a huge victory margin when the border seat was converted into a BJP bastion by four-time sitting party MP Vinod Khanna? The actor-politician died of bladder cancer early this year. In the bypoll, he was a talking point among the people. The BJP and Salaria ignored Khanna throughout the campaign. They did not bother to credit him for the development on the ground. This angered the people. As a local shopkeeper said, “This was disrespect to Khanna. The actor’s soul in the heaven must be thanking the Gurdaspur voters for remembering him and throwing the BJP out.”

A crowd puller, Vinod Khanna joined the BJP in 1997. In 1998, Khanna successfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Gurdaspur. He lost once in 2009. But he regained the seat in the 2014 elections. At the Centre, he was made a minister also. The late actor is known as the “Pul-Wala Khanna” in Gurdaspur as he was instrumental in building vital bridges in the area, making people’s life comfortable and bringing development. The people living in the border areas recall how the “pul-wala Khanna” helped construct halfa-dozen bridges: the two main ones were built across the Beas on the Gurdaspur-Mukerian road and the other across the Ujha near Taragarh. These overpasses have facilitated quicker movement of goods and improved connectivity between Gurdaspur district and the rest of the country. Interestingly, it was Captain Amarinder Singh who inaugurated the Mukerian bridge in 2003 during his first term as Chief Minister. A few days later, Khanna asked his supporters “to cleanse the bridge” before he himself inaugurated it.

People remember Khanna’s tireless efforts to remove water logging from Dinanagar’s villages, to revive Batala’s almost dead industry and find a solution to the complicated problem of Pathankot’s railway crossings. Salaria has reasons to be uncomfortable with Khanna’s legacy. In 2009, Salaria joined the BJP. He says that the party had promised him a poll ticket. But Khanna was nominated. Before the 2014 elections, Salaria says he was again promised the party ticket. But Khanna again got it. An angry Salaria had threatened to contest as an Independent. He was pacified with the promise he would be allotted the ticket for the 2019 elections. Ultimately, Khanna’s death “helped” him get the elusive ticket.

The name of the actor’s wife Kavita Khanna was also in circulation for getting the BJP ticket. “If she would have contested,” a shopkeeper says, “she would have given a tough fight to the Congress.”