THE NEWS FREEDOM
CHANDIGARH, MARCH 14
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) announced its decision to independently contest in the Lok Sabha elections, revealing a slate of eight candidates, five of whom are Cabinet ministers, out of a total of 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab on Thursday. While the AAP and the Congress, both part of the INDIA bloc, have formed a seat-sharing arrangement for the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, Gujarat, and Haryana, they are pursuing separate paths in Punjab.
Among the notable selections, the five cabinet ministers chosen to contest in the Lok Sabha elections are Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal for Amritsar, Laljit Singh Bhullar for Khadoor Sahib, Gurmeet Singh Khuddian for Bathinda, Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer for Sangrur, and Dr. Balbir Singh for Patiala.
In a further move, the AAP has fielded Gurpreet Singh GP, a former Congress MLA from Bassi Pathana, as party candidate for the Fatehgarh Sahib Lok Sabha seat. Singh had recently switched allegiance to the AAP. Concurrently, the sitting AAP MP from Jalandhar, Sushil Rinku, has been selected to contest from the same constituency. Rinku, formerly a Congress MLA from Jalandhar West, joined the AAP last year and secured victory in the Jalandhar parliamentary seat during a by-poll.
Additionally, the AAP has positioned renowned Punjabi actor and singer Karamjeet Anmol, who holds close ties to Chief Minister Mann, as the party candidate for the Faridkot parliamentary seat. Anmol, recognized for his roles in popular films such as ‘Carry on Jatta’, ‘Nikka Zaildar’, and ‘Muklawa’, actively campaigned alongside Mann during the 2022 assembly polls.