Mohinder Singh Kaypee third party-hopper to enter Jalandhar battle arena

Tribune News Service

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, April 22

The Congress today suffered a big jolt yet again as a third big political clan of the state has left the former in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. Mohinder Singh Kaypee (67), son of former minister Darshan Singh Kaypee, who was gunned down by militants in 1992, quit the Congress to join SAD. He was immediately announced as the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Jalandhar (reserved) seat.

3-time MLA from Jalandhar (south)

• Mohinder Kaypee was three-time MLA from Jalandhar south Assembly seat (now Jalandhar west), in 1985, 1992 and 2002. He became MP from Jalandhar in 2009
• He was Minister of State for Education, Youth and Sports Affairs in 1992. He was the PCC chief from 2008-10. From 2002-07, he was the Minister of Transport and Technical Education

Last month, grandson of ex-CM Beant Singh and sitting Ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu was the first to move out and join the BJP. Two days back Karamjeet Chaudhary, wife of deceased Jalandhar MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary, also quit the party and followed Bittu’s footsteps. Chaudhary and Kaypee have remained the party’s prominent Dalit leaders till recent past.

Kaypee was three-time MLA from Jalandhar south Assembly seat (now called Jalandhar west), in 1985, 1992 and 2002. He became MP from Jalandhar in 2009. He was the PPCC chief from 2008-10. He was Minister of State for Education, and Youth and Sports Affairs in 1992. In the 2002-07 Congress term, he held the portfolios of Minister of Transport and Technical Education.

With his announcement as SAD candidate, he is the third candidate from Jalandhar to have a Congress background. While former CM Charanjit Channi is the official Congress candidate here, Kaypee has spent over four decades as a Congress leader in Jalandhar. Sitting Jalandhar MP Sushil Rinku, who is now the BJP candidate, too was with the Congress till a year ago.

With Kaypee joining SAD, his daughter Karishma, who is wedded to Channi’s nephew Manraj Singh, stood by her father. Asked why he had chosen to contest against his relative Channi, he said, “Politics and family relations are two different things and should not be mixed up. Both of us can have separate political inclinations and aspirations.”

Kaypee further said, “In 2022 (when Charanjit Channi was the CM), the party kept him in dark till the eleventh hour over ticket. He had even entered the office of the returning officer and had started filing his nomination from Adampur Assembly segment, but the party offered the ticket at the last moment to Sukhwinder Kotli. It took me two years to come out of that humiliating incident.” It is being said that it his anguish against Pargat, Kotli and Channi that Kaypee has taken the step to quit the Congress and join Akali Dal.

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