NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal to contest from Amritsar Lok Sabha seat

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, March 14

After the AAP announced to re-field its Minister of NRI Affairs Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat, he sounded buoyant to win the seat for the party.

Facing murder case

According to the affidavit filed before contesting the 2022 Assembly elections, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal had declared that a murder case was registered against him and the Punjab and Haryana High Court had stayed his arrest in the case.

Immediately after the party released its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections incorporating his name, Dhaliwal was quick in addressing a hurriedly called press conference in Ajnala area from where he was elected for the state assembly in 2022.

Fielded by the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from the Amritsar seat, he had received 20,087 votes, which was a mere 2.34 per cent of the total votes polled. Gurjeet Singh Aujla of Congress had comfortably won the election by securing over 4.45 lakh votes. Riding on the AAP wave, Dhaliwal had won the 2022 Assembly election from Ajnala Assembly seat, situated in the border area.

In early years of his political career, he was associated with the Congress. Before contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal reportedly left his American citizenship for contesting the same. At that time, Dhaliwal had claimed that he promised party supremo Arvind Kejriwal way back in 2015 that he would sacrifice such things for the party. After spending 13 years in the US, he returned here in 2014 to join active politics. Before moving to the US, Dhaliwal claimed that he was elected sarpanch of Jagdev Kalan village. He was associated in holding annual Hasham Shah Mela at historic Jagdev Kalan village near Amritsar. He had passed his matriculation from a Government school in his village.

He says his tenure as MLA would be remembered for extricating 11,000 hectares of government land from individuals.

Meanwhile, the AAP will field its candidate from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat for the fourth consecutive term. It had first fielded the candidate from here in 2014 — late Dr Daljit Singh — an internationally acclaimed ophthalmologist. In the 2017 parliamentary election, it had fielded former Akali leader Upkar Singh Sandhu. Both Dr Singh and Sandhu had lost the elections.