BJP Jalandhar West candidate Sheetal Angural fails to drum up support of senior leaders

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, July 9

Unlike AAP candidate Mohinder Bhagat and Congress nominee Surinder Kaur, who got the backing of their senior leaders, the BJP’s Sheetal Angural apparently failed to drum up support during campaign for the Jalandhar West bypoll.

The saffron party, which has two MLAs in the state, had bagged second highest votes in this segment during the Lok Sabha poll.

Though the BJP had released a list of 38 star campaigners for Jalandhar West, several prominent leaders, including Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, Saudan Singh, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Hema Malini, Manoj Tiwari, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Capt Amarinder Singh, Anurag Thakur and Manpreet Badal never came to campaign for Angural.

MoS Ravneet Bittu accompanied the party candidate on the occasion of filing of nomination papers on June 21. Even state BJP chief Sunil Jakhar spent a few days here.

It has been learnt that most senior leaders did not probably came out in support of Angural due to his flip-flops. Within two years, he had switched from the BJP to AAP and quit the ruling party to rejoin the saffron outfit again ahead of the General Election.

Moreover, there’s a general perception that Angural records every conversation. Thus, senior leaders purportedly stayed away. The party leaders knew that despite being close to AAP MLA Raman Arora, Angural came up with graft allegations against him. He had also befriended his arch rival Sushil Rinku while rejoining the BJP.

If this was not all, Angural allegedly tracked the movement of all BJP leaders canvassing for him. At a meeting held three days ago, Angural said he had evidence against fromer MLA KD Bhandari of meeting AAP MLA Arora in Adampur recently. This led to a lot of tension within the BJP camp.

Bhandari said, “I had met AAP MLA Raman Arora during a function in the club. There is nothing wrong in meeting political rivals. Every leader does that. I had taken senior party leaders into confidence before this meeting and shared all details with them.”

Bittu said, “The party leadership asked me to be present when Angural files his nomination papers. The same day, I also participated in his roadshow. From June 24, the Parliament session began and I had to attend it.”