BSP pins hope on Balwinder

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, May 20

Even though BSP candidate from here Balwinder Kumar (39) may not win the Lok Sabha elections, but his campaign has clearly indicated that a new leader is born in the party after almost 15 years.

Today, a day after polling, all political circles were abuzz with reports that Balwinder could be a big gainer and the votes polled in his favour could surpass all previous figures from Jalandhar. There had been a huge void of a dedicated leader in the party, which now seems to have been filled. The last big leaders from Jalandhar with the BSP that the party can remember were Pawan Tinu and Baldev Khaira, both of whom are now SAD MLAs from Adampur and Phillaur, respectively.

The departure of these leaders from the BSP had led to a fall in the morale of the party workers, who had started drifting and the vote percentage of the party kept falling consistently. It crumbled at 1.9 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and went further down to 1.4 per cent in the 2017 Assembly elections.

However, scribe-turned-politician Balwinder Kumar proved to be a game-changer recovering not just the party cadres back into its fold but also making further inroads. Though a Ravidassia, he boasts of having got votes from all castes. “Everywhere that I went, people asked me if I too would ditch them like previous leaders. I had to convince them in every rally that I will stick to the party. The fact that I chose not to join state government job in the Public Relations Department in May 2014 helped me make them believe that I will remain grounded in the work for rebuilding the party,” said Balwinder.

This was not the first election for Balwinder, who had polled only 5,208 votes from the Kartarpur Assembly seat in 2017 and lost his security deposit.