Jalandhar West Bypoll: Know your candidates – A peep into their past

Cong’s Surinder most educated

Having passed out pre-medical from KMV College in Jalandhar in 1981, Surinder Kaur (63), Congress nominee for the Jalandhar West bypoll, is the most educated candidate from among the main party candidates. While AAP, BSP and BJP candidates are matriculates, the SAD nominee is illiterate.

A resident of New Abadi Jallowal falling in Buta Mandi, she is a self-made woman. Her husband, Ram Asra Chaudhary, who was a councillor in 1997, passed away in 2001. Ever since, she had been taking care of her house, her two sons, family business of manufacturing leather goods while doing her duties as an MC councillor.

Surinder has remained four-time councillor and was posted as the Senior Deputy Mayor in the last MC House led by the Congress. A Ravidassia, she was picked over other ticket aspirants from the same community. She has been the choice of Jalandhar MP Charanjit S Channi and other Congress leaders, including Partap Bajwa, who wanted to pick a rooted party worker for the contest.

Surinder Kaur’s rivals have been attacking her for not having been able to do much for Jalandhar West even while remaining on the post of the Senior Deputy Mayor, but Channi and Bajwa are out to defend her at every step.

BSP’s Binder runs grocery store

Forty-nine-year-old Binder Kumar Lakha, who is the BSP nominee for the Jalandhar West bypoll, is a resident of Abadpura locality.

Associated with the party for the past over two decades, he runs a grocery store, while his wife owns a boutique. Having assets to the tune of Rs 51 lakh, he is getting a good backing from party’s state chief Jasvir Garhi and Jalandhar leader Balwinder Kumar.

After Shiromani Akali Dal’s main group led by Sukhbir Badal announced support for him instead of their own party candidate, he and other BSP leaders are feeling much at ease.

Though Jalandhar West is a reserved seat, the BSP had polled just 1,958 votes in the Lok Sabha elections held this month in this segment. The SAD was slightly better at 2,623 votes.

Combining votes from both sides, the BSP candidate is expecting a better performance in the bypoll. He has been promising his voters cleaner governance, end of ‘goondaraj’ and check on drug and liquor menace. He has also been saying that illegal betting and gambling, which have destroyed many houses, will also be brought to an end.

Rebel SAD leaders’ nominee a housewife

Surjit Kaur (59), official nominee of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for the Jalandhar West bypoll, is a two-time Municipal Corporation councillor and a housewife by profession. Even as her affidavit mentions her as an illiterate, it does not show in her confident speeches.

Hailing from Mithu Basti locality in Jalandhar West, her family is known for social works that she and her deceased husband Pritam Singh have been undertaking in the area.

Even as Akalis had not been expecting a good show as the party could get only 2,623 votes in this segment in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha elections held four weeks ago, a bigger setback came for her this Wednesday when the party withdrew support for her. Since she was the choice of former minister Jagir Kaur and ex-MLA Gurpartap Wadala, both of whom had opened revolt against Sukhbir Badal, the party chose to disown her.

The SAD, however, could not withdraw her candidature or the symbol ‘scales’ given to her on time. Hence, she remains to be officially an Akali candidate. Though Jagir Kaur and Wadala stand by her, the Sukhbir Badal-led group has announced not to support the candidate contesting on the party symbol and has instead announced support for the BSP candidate.

Will Bhagat swing poll the AAP way?

After spending a long time with the BJP, veteran leader Mohinder Bhagat, son of former Punjab minister Chunni Lal Bhagat, joined the AAP ahead of the 2023 Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll. For the high-stakes Jalandhar West Assembly bypoll now, the AAP has hedged its bets on the former BJP veteran to steer the party to a win. The party has been banking on Mohinder Bhagat’s clean image, experience as a politician and his resonance with the Jalandhar West’s robust Bhagat community. Bhagat, incidentally, has remained the halqa in-charge of AAP from the constituency.

Last year, Bhagat quitting the BJP came as a surprise. He dined with BJP colleagues one day and the next day, he was with AAP. Emotional scenes were witnessed as his former BJP colleagues were in grief with his father Chunni Lal Bhagat, who swore allegiance to the saffron party, expressing surprise. Mohinder Bhagat was considered one of the three pillars of the BJP’s urban strongholds (Jalandhar West, North and Central).

The 65-year-old had been with the BJP since he was young, worked with the Jan Sangh and remained on several high posts within the party. While his father Chunni Lal Bhagat’s successful stints (1997, 2007 and 2012) wrested the (former Congress stronghold) seat from the Kaypees to the BJP’s kitty, Mohinder Bhagat’s own twin outings for the seat remained unsuccessful.

Homecoming for Sheetal Angural in BJP

Former BJP leader Sheetal Angural, who was elected as an AAP MLA in 2022, has come a long way in politics in his relatively short career.

Having quit the BJP to join AAP in 2022, his first-ever electoral outing was as an AAP candidate for Jalandhar West in the 2022 Assembly elections, which he won. Back to the BJP fold this year, it will be Angural’s first experience contesting any poll as a BJP candidate. Formerly a BJP functionary, it was his short, tumultuous yet successful stint in AAP, which accorded him a heightened political stature. What AAP terms as betrayal, the BJP calls homecoming.

The Jalandhar West bypoll was necessitated by Angural’s resignation as an AAP MLA earlier this year, when he joined the BJP in March.

A slew of criminal cases against Angural and his being outspoken, earned him the tag of ‘controversy’s child’ even as an AAP MLA. Now in the BJP, earlier cases against him and the threat of new FIRs hang like the sword of Damocles over him.

Another highlight of his return, and one of the strengths of the BJP campaign, is his newfound bonhomie with former foe Sushil Rinku, as both vie to give credit to each other and acknowledge each other during the campaign. They have made gains in Jalandhar West in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

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