Rewarded for loyalty to party: Hardeep Singh Mundian

“I have been rewarded for my loyalty and commitment towards the party,” new Cabinet Minister Hardeep Singh Mundian has said while expressing gratitude towards party supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann for inducting him into the Council of Ministers.

The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) another new face and party hopper Mundian (48) had also scripted history by winning the rural Assembly seat of Sahnewal in Ludhiana district by defeating the two-time sitting Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MLA and former minister Sharanjit Singh Dhillon, who had ended third in a triangular contest in the high-stakes 2022 Punjab Assembly elections.

In an interaction with The Tribune, here on Tuesday, the new minister said he would work hard with zeal and honesty to discharge the big responsibility, which the party leadership had assigned to him, and come up to the high expectations of the public.

Mundian, who was sworn in as Cabinet Minister in Chandigarh on Monday, was given the portfolios of Revenue and Rehabilitation, Disaster Management, Housing and Urban Development, and Water Supply and Sanitation.

“I will review the working of all departments assigned to me and bring necessary changes in the present system to facilitate the public at large and cut red-tapism, if any,” he expressed.

Asserting that the public was supreme, the new minister said accountability, responsiveness and transparency in the public delivery system will be on top of his agenda.

Except the SAD and the Congress nominees, all other 16 candidates in the 2022 poll fray had lost their security deposits as they had failed to garner even 16.67 per cent of the total polled votes.

A matriculate businessman, dealing in building material and running a hotel, Mundian, who had switched over to the AAP few months before the February 2022 state poll after his previous stints in the Congress, the Lok Insaaf Party (LIP), and also contesting as an Independent candidate in the past, had polled 61,515 votes, which accounted for 34.33 per cent of the total 1,79,196 votes polled. He had defeated Congress nominee Vikram Singh Bajwa, son-in-law of former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, who had got 46,322 votes, constituting 25.85 per cent of the total votes polled.

“The new state Cabinet will act tough against corruption and provide pro-people governance to fulfill all the pre-poll promises made by us,” the new minister said.

He said: “I had got a massive response from the people as they were fed up with the bad governance and corrupt system during the successive governments run by traditional parties.”

“We will also introduce public-friendly initiatives in the public delivery system, especially pertaining to the Revenue and Housing departments, and upgrade the water supply and sanitation infrastructure, besides ensuring better basic civic amenities to all,” the first-time minister added.

Sahnewal, which was part of Koom Kalan and Ludhiana Rural Assembly segments till 2007, before being carved out as an independent constituency following the delimitation in 2009, had elected SAD’s Sharanjit Singh Dhillon in the past both elections held in 2017 and 2012 before Mundian wresting control over the rural constituency in 2022.