Congress gears up for Chabbewal bypoll

Although the announcement of the byelection for Chabbewal Vidhan Sabha seat, which had fallen vacant after the then Congress MLA, Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal, resigned and became an MP on Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket, is yet to be made, but the Congress has already started the party activities in this regard.

On Monday, Congress state president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring held a meeting at Hoshiarpur City Centre (community centre) to mobilise workers for the byelection of Chabbewal. During this, he made sharp attacks on Chabbewal for leaving the party. The Congress is gearing up to regain Chabbewal seat, which is considered a stronghold of the party.

Warring said if Chabbewal was clean, he would not have betrayed the party because as soon as the government got a whiff of the scams that he might have done, including distributing fake sanction letters for financial assistance for houses before the Assembly elections, he compromised with them.

Later, he instructed every worker to form teams at the booth and block levels at the grassroots level. He said the kind of situation that the AAP had created in Punjab had never been so bad ever in the past. “Forget about the development of the Chabbewal constituency, whatever he did by betraying the people who trusted him in the Assembly election, people have made up their mind to sideline him and the result of this will be visible soon.”

On this occasion, Leader of Opposition in Vidhan Sabha Pratap Singh Bajwa, former MLA and Congress district president Arun Dogra Mikki, former minister Sangat Singh Giljian, former Cabinet Minister Sunder Shyam Arora, MLA, Jalandhar North, Bawa Henry, Shahkot MLA Hardev Ladi Shirowalia, Phagwara MLA Balwinder Dhaliwal, former MLAs Rajinder Beri, Rana KP, Capt Sandeep Sandhu, Pawan Adia, Indu Bala and Kulbir Singh Jeera were also present.

Chabbewal gave 3,900 fake sanction letters: Bajwa

Taking a dig at Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal during the Chabbewal Congress workers’ meeting, Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa said the former had joined AAP before election because his fraud of distributing 3,900 fake sanction letters of grant for repair of houses had come to light. Bajwa said the then Congress government had sanctioned grant to only 300 houses. He alleged that Chabbewal had distributed the fake sanction letters by forging the signatures of the BDPO. While the 300 original beneficiaries had got the grant, the remaining were bluffed into believing that their grant had been stopped due to code of conduct and they would get it after the elections.