Will sympathy wave play its role in Jalandhar Parliament By-Election?

Senior leaders of all the political parties are busy in chalking out for a mechanism and strategy how to register win in the Jalandhar parliamentary by- election which is going to polls on 10th May 2023. Congress has announced its candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary widow of Late Santokh Singh Chaudhary. AAP has announced its candidate for the Jalandhar parliament by election Sushil Rinku, a former MLA from Jalandhar West Constituency and represented Congress party as MLA from 2017-2022. BJP is still to announce its candidate. There is a feeling that BJP high command is interested to announce the name of that candidate who has popularity, charisma to woo the voters. Similarly, SAD–BSP alliance has also yet to announce the name of its candidate.   

AAP has announced Sushil Rinku as its Lok Sabha election candidate who had to taste defeat from AAP candidate Sheetal Angural from Jalandhar West Constituency where he was a Congress candidate in 2022 Punjab assembly elections. AAP is hopeful that implementation of 300 units of free power to the domestic consumers and free bus travel to females can transfer the votes on silent mode to their party. In the city AAP has two elected MLAs Sheetal Angural from Jalandhar West and Raman Arora from Jalandhar Central. Balkar Singh represents Kartarpur Constituency and Inderjit Kaur Mann represents Nakodar Constituency. AAP has Four MLAs out of nine MLAs falling under Jalandhar parliament constituency. AAP has appointed Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema as election in-charge for the Jalandhar parliamentary by poll. 

Five Congress MLAs represents assembly constituencies Vikramjit Singh Chaudhary (Phillaur), Hardev Singh Laddi (Shahkot), Sukhwinder Singh Kotli (Adampur), Pargat Singh (Jalandhar Cantt) and Avtar Singh Junior (Jalandhar North). Thus, five MLAs are from Congress and four from AAP and BJP- SAD(B) alliance have no sitting MLA in Jalandhar parliamentary seat.

Congress had announced its candidate few weeks back and its workers have started canvassing and meetings with the masses. Congress workers are hopeful that they will perform better and win the seat due to sympathy votes and ample of time they have got for the canvassing. They are hopeful that shifting of loyalty by Sushil Rinku from Congress to AAP will have nil impact on the Congress vote bank. Will Congress cricketer turned politician Navjot Singh Sidhu campaign in the Jalandhar bypoll for the Congress candidate.

Meanwhile, BJP senior leadership including Saudan Singh, Som Parkash, Vijay Rupani, Mohinder Singh, Narinder Singh Raina, Ashwani Sharma, Manthri Srinivasulu, Jiwan Gupta, Rajesh Bagha, Manoranjan Kalia, K.D. Bhandari, Mohinder Bhagat, Sarabjit Singh Makkar, Rakesh Rathore and others have already carried out series of meetings to boost the morale of the party workers. The party workers are in high spirits due to the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi policies and programmes. If all goes well BJP candidate will certainly perform much better than expectations. 

SAD(B)-BSP alliance partners are to announce their candidate. The meeting of both the parties was held in Jalandhar in which the party leaders Sukhbir Singh Badal and Jasvir Singh Garhi were present to chalk out the future strategy for finalising name of the party candidate. 

Authored by:
Rajat Kumar Mohindru, 
Journalist,
Jalandhar City.