Jalandhar bypoll: Congress, Akali leaders jointly ‘catch’ AAP outsiders functioning illegally as booth agents

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, May 10

In a joint fight against the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which attempted to deploy a large number of its leaders and workers for booth management for the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll on Wednesday, the Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal leaders have been jointly gheraoing them and handing them over to the police.

The joint cohesive attack of the opposition parties coming within the first four hours of the polling process has put the AAP workers in the dock especially as the Election Commission of India had directed all outsiders to leave Jalandhar after campaign got over at 6 pm on Monday. Most of the action by the Akali and Congress leaders has been in the rural areas, including Phillaur, Shahkot and Adampur.

The party leaders accused the ECI of not acting as per its own guidelines and allowing the outsiders to stay in. They also said that Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann was setting a wrong precedent of committing violations of model election code. They shared pictures and videos of AAP leaders from Moga, Dharamkot and other places having ID cards issued as poll agents in Jalandhar and juxtaposed them with their FB page profiles to prove their point. All updates of the violation were being shared by the Congress, SAD leaders live on their FB, Twitter and Instagram pages in real time so as to expose the working of AAP leaders to the voters of Jalandhar as the polling went on.

LoP Partap Bajwa said, “By making the AAP workers from outside don yellow turbans and making them sit at booths here, the party leaders think they would manage booths and sway or threaten voters today. But we have exposed them all. Such tactics of the ruling party will not be allowed to work.”

Phillaur ex-Akali MLA Baldev Khaira said, “AAP workers from outside, including one Sher Bahadur Singh Dhaliwal from Rampura Phul, was here as a poll agent in Nangal village of Phillaur and we caught them.” Likewise, Hardev Laddi Sherowalia, Congress MLA from Shahkot, gheroed AAP MLA from Baba Bakala Dalvir S Tong while he was moving in a car here. “We blocked his car from all sides and prevented him from escaping. We called in the police and handed him over to them”.

Akali ex-MLA from Adampur Pawan Tinu too said that he checked some booths and found that AAP workers from Attari were deployed there. Congress MLA Pargat Singh too said, “All polling agents have to be local persons but AAP’s polling agent working in a booth in city Ashish Nayyar was found to be from Patiala. Another worker Baljit Chand Sharma has been caught by our party leaders from Adampur while being deployed as AAP agent there. Sukhcharan Brar, who is AAP worker from Bathinda, was spotted in Phillaur.” Gurinder Singh Guggu of Moga was found working in Shahkot, he alleged.