Jalandhar, January 17
Senior state ministers from this region, including Pratap Singh Bajwa, Avtar Henry, Mohinder Singh Kaypee, Amarjit Singh Samra and Gurkanwal Kaur, have been re-nominated as Congress candidates for the Assembly elections.

Rajnish Kumar, son of Speaker Kewal Kishan, have been made the party nominee from Mukerian, represented by Kishan for a long time. The Speaker opted out of the fray due to old age.

Gurkanwal Kaur, daughter of the late Chief Minister Beant Singh, has been re-nominated, so also Deputy Speaker Darbari Lal who represents the Amritsar Central constituency.

Pritam Singh Bhinder, who had been the Police Commissioner of Delhi during Emergency, has been brought into active politics by fielding him from Gurdaspur, a constituency represented by his wife and former Union Minister Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder who died recently.

Tourism Minister Raghunath S Puri has also been renominated.

Phagwara, January 17
SAD president Parkash Singh Badal was at his humorous best while campaigning for the Phagwara SAD-BJP candidate, Ch Swarna Ram, on Tuesday.

Pleading with voters to shoo away the Congress leaders when they came to beg votes on February 13, Mr Badal narrated an anecdote.

He said a lawyer, in an attempt to save the person, advised his client to just say ‘hurrr’ to every query of the judge or public prosecutor. The client acted upon the advice and was discharged by the judge who thought the person to be mentally deranged.

“However, when the lawyer demanded his fee, the client paid back his saviour with ‘hurrr’.

 Mr Badal urged the voters to send back the Congress leaders with a ‘hurrr’ (a sound used to shoo away birds/stray cattle).

 He said that the Congress government had both ‘kuttya’ (thrashed) and ‘luttya’ (plundered) the Punjabis and should be voted out of power.

Jalandhar, January 17
Finally, NRI Pardeep Singh Bhangu’s uncle Harmesh Lal has been booked for selling the former’s house located at Abadhi Dharampura in Khambra village here fraudulently in connivance with some other persons. The NRI had to make several rounds of different police officers to get the FIR registered against his uncle.

The FIR was registered against NRI’s uncle under Sections 420, 419, 465, 467, 468, 471, 120 B, IPC, at Division No. 4 on January 12, five weeks after submitting written complaint to the police.

The NRI had submitted complaint to then SP (Headquarters), Mr Opinderjeet Singh Ghuman, on December 5. Mr Ghuman had marked the inquiry to the DSP (Rural II), Mr Jagmohan Singh, who found his uncle guilty and recommended registration of the FIR. However, Harmesh Lal is still at large.

The Tribune had carried detailed news-items about the fraud with the NRI on December 28 and 31. Actually, Mr Bhangu along with his family members, including his mother, had gone to Canada a few years ago and asked his uncle Harmesh Lal to look after their house but he made a plan with some persons to grab it.

As a part of the plan, Harmesh Lal obtained fake general power of attorney from an impersonator presented as Mr Bhangu and the same was registered by the Sub-Registrar I on November 22. Interestingly, the details of the visits entered on Mr Bhangu’s passport clearly indicated that he was in Canada on that day.