Chandigarh: Having lost the Sangrur Lok Sabha constituency in 2022, AAP is leaving no stone unturned to wrest this seat from SAD (Amritsar).
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann is leading the charge against the incumbent MP to reclaim the seat that he himself represented from 2014-22. A crucial meeting to decide on the party strategy for Sangrur with all his party MLAs and ministers representing the Assembly segments was held here this morning.
SAD (A) won bypoll in 2022
– SAD (A) chief Simranjit Singh Mann had won the Sangrur bypoll in 2022
– It was a rather humiliating defeat for AAP considering that the byelection was held within three months of the Assembly poll
– The AAP had a resounding victory in March 2022, winning 92 of 117 seats
Sangrur bypoll in 2022
It was a rather humiliating defeat for AAP considering that the byelection was held within three months of the Assembly poll
The AAP had a resounding victory in March 2022, winning 92 of 117 seats
SAD (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann had won the Sangrur bypoll, necessitated after the resignation of Bhagwant Mann as the MP upon his assuming charge as Chief Minister. It was a rather humiliating defeat for the state's ruling party, considering that the byelection was held within three months of the Assembly election. The AAP had a resounding victory in March 2022, winning 92 of 117 seats. Also, with all nine constituencies in Sangrur being represented by AAP, including Dhuri represented by CM Mann, the defeat was rather surprising as the votes polled in favour of the party went down by 2.6 per cent within three months of the party coming to power. Interestingly, in 2019, this was the only Lok Sabha seat won by AAP.
For the upcoming Lok Sabha poll, the party has placed its bet on Sports Minister and Barnala MLA Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer. All party MLAs from Sangrur Harpal Cheema (Dirba), Aman Arora (Sunam), Narinder Kaur Bharaj (Sangrur) Barinder Kumar Goyal (Lehra), Labh Singh Ugoke (Bhadaur), Kulwant Singh Pandori (Mehal Kalan) and Mohammad Jamil Ur Rehman (Malerkotla) remained present at the meeting with Mann and party candidate Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer for almost two hours.
The Chief Minister is learnt to have told the MLAs to take the government's positive agenda to each village in the Sangrur constituency. They were asked to increase their public interface and repeatedly tell voters about the recruitment in the government sector, free power for domestic households, mohalla clinics, Schools of Eminence.
Today is the second meeting of MLAs headed by Mann. In the wake of the “poaching” of its leaders post the arrest of AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal, AAP yesterday began its exercise of having one-to-one meetings of small groups of its MLAs with the state party president and the Chief Minister. The idea behind the meetings is also to get a feedback and devise poll strategy for these two Lok Sabha seats.
