Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Saturday released its first list of seven candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Punjab. Of the seven, six have been either former cabinet ministers, MPs or MLAs.
In a move to recognise its stalwarts, the party has allocated tickets to veteran members or their relatives. Coinciding with Baisakhi, the party chose this auspicious time for the announcement. The election for Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats is scheduled for 1 June.
Dr Daljit Singh Cheema, one of the senior-most members of the party who has been an MLA from Rupnagar (formerly Ropar) and a former education minister, will be contesting the elections from Gurdaspur.
A medical professional, Dr Cheema has been with the Akali Dal for three decades and has remained a staunch loyalist of the party.
From 2007 to 2012, he served as an adviser to the then-chief minister Prakash Singh Badal.
In 2009, he unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from the Anandpur Sahib seat, losing to the then Congress candidate Ravneet Singh Bittu.
In 2012, Dr Cheema was elected as an MLA from Ropar and was made the education minister in the SAD-BJP government. He contested from the Ropar seat in 2017 and 2022 but lost.
He is currently one of the core committee members of the party. This is the first time the 62-year-old will be contesting elections from Gurdaspur, where he will be pitted against Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Dinesh Singh Babbu, a former deputy Speaker of the Punjab assembly. The Congress and the Aam Adami Party (AAP) are yet to declare their candidates for this seat.
The seat is currently held by BJP’s actor-politician Sunny Deol, who has not been repeated as the candidate.
Earlier this year, Cheema had staked his claim for the Anandpur Sahib ticket on the grounds that Ropar was one of the assembly segments and he belongs to that area.
However, the Anandpur Sahib ticket has been given to former MP Professor Prem Singh Chandumajra, another veteran leader of the party.
The 74-year-old Chandumajra started his career as a lecturer in economics at the Government College, Dera Bassi, and later remained the subject expert at the Punjab School Education Board.
Before joining politics, Chandumajra became an MLA in 1985 from Dakha in Patiala. He went on to become a minister under former chief minister Surjit Singh Barnala from 1985 to 1987.
Chandumajra won the Patiala Lok Sabha seat in 1996, defeating Sant Ram Singla of the Congress, and then again in 1998, defeating former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who was then with the Congress.
Chandumajra parted ways with the Akali Dal (Badal) and remained part of its factions for some years before returning to the mother party in 2007. In 2014, he was elected MP from the Anandpur Sahib on the Akali ticket but lost to Congress’s Manish Tewari in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
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Others on the list
The others on the list include former MLA and real estate developer N.K. Sharma (53), who is the party’s candidate from Patiala.
Sharma remained a two-time MLA in 2012 and 2017 from the Dera Bassi seat. In 2022, he lost to AAP candidate Kuljit Singh Randhawa.
Sharma will be fighting former MP and Union Minister Preneet Kaur, who has been fielded by the BJP, Punjab health minister Dr Balbir Singh, who has been fielded by the AAP, and former AAP MP Dharamvira Gandhi, who was inducted into the Congress and is expected to be given the ticket from the seat.
Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Anil Joshi (60), who shifted from the BJP to the Akali Dal, will be contesting from Amritsar. He joined the BJP in 2021 after he was expelled from the party.
Joshi had represented the Amritsar North seat in the state assembly on a BJP ticket in 2007 and then in 2012. He also remained the local bodies minister in the Akali Dal-BJP government from 2012 to 2017.
He lost to Congress candidate Sunil Dutti in the 2017 elections and the AAP candidate Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh in the 2022 assembly elections.
Joshi would be fighting former ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who has been fielded by the BJP, and the state agriculture minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, who is the AAP candidate.
From the reserved Fatehgarh Sahib seat, the party has fielded Bikramjit Singh Khalsa (54), a former MLA.
Khalsa won the Khanna seat in 2007 but lost the Raikot seat in 2012. He remained a chief parliamentary secretary in the SAD-BJP government and also remained a member of the Punjab Public Service Commission.
His father, the late Basant Singh Khalsa, remained the MP from Ropar twice — once on the Akali ticket in 1977 and as an Independent in 1996.
An engineer from Guru Nanak Engineering College Ludhiana, Khalsa will be fighting AAP’s Gurpreet Singh GP.
Meanwhile, Rajwinder Singh, grandson of former cabinet minister Gurdev Singh Badal, has been fielded from the Faridkot (reserve) constituency.
Gurdev Singh Badal was a veteran Akali leader considered to be close to former chief minister Prakash Singh Badal. He remained an MLA seven times, winning five elections from his home seat of Punjgrain (now Jaitu).
He remained the agriculture minister of Punjab from 1997 to 2002 during Badal’s regime. Gurdev’s son, Suba Badal, lost in the 2017 assembly seat from Jaitu as an Independent candidate.
Rajwinder Singh is pitted against comedian actor Karamjit Singh Anmol of the AAP, singer and BJP’s Hans Raj Hans, a former MLA.
From Sangrur, the party has fielded former MLA Iqbal Singh Jhundan (62). Jhundan is currently the president of the Akali Dal in the district. He remained an MLA twice — first in 2007 from Dhuri and then in 2012 from Amargarh. He will be fighting the AAP candidate, cabinet minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer.
Jhundan had staked his claim over the seat last week following rumours that Parminder Dhindsa was being considered as the Akali candidate from Sangrur.
Former Akali leaders Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and his son Parminder had been expelled from the party in 2020 for anti-party activities following which the duo had formed the Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).
Last month, the Dhindsas came back into the Akali fold and merged their faction with the Shiromani Akali Dal. Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa had contested the 2009 and 2014 Sangrur parliamentary elections unsuccessfully. Parminder contested the 2019 parliamentary elections from Sangrur but lost to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.
Meanwhile, Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is the sitting MP from Ferozepur, has already announced he will not be contesting the Lok Sabha elections this time. The candidature of his wife, Harsimrta Kaur Badal, a three-time MP from Bathinda, is yet to be announced.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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