Punjab BJP election committee meets today to finalise Gurdaspur Lok Sabha candidate

Chandigarh: The Punjab BJP election committee will meet in Jalandhar on Saturday to finalise the party candidate for Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll to be held on October 11. There are five BJP leaders pushing their case for the party candidature.

These are former Gurdaspur MP Vinod Khanna’s wife Kavita Khanna, former BJP national executive member and businessman Swaran Salaria, former Punjab BJP president Ashwani Sharma, former chief parliamentary secretary Jagdish Sahni and sitting Sujanpur MLA Dinesh Singh Babu.

According to sources, party leaders consider Kavita and Salaria as frontrunners since they have been strongly pleading their case by attending party events and meetings in the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha constituency.

Punjab BJP president Vijay Sampla and Punjab BJP in-charge Prabhat Jha had met national general secretary (organization) Ram Lal on Thursday to discuss the issue, say sources.

Kavita, director of a pharmaceutical company, had been managing constituency affairs when her late husband was away on film assignments, say the sources, adding that the party was considering her name to garner sympathy votes.

On the other hand, a native of Chouhan village in Pathankot district, Salaria is a Rajput businessman, who was being considered by the party to reap votes of Rajputs and ex-servicemen in the constituency, say sources.

Former member of the BJP national executive and former chairman of the Punjab State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, Salaria has never contested any election. However, he remained party in-charge of Gurdaspur Lok Sabha elections twice and was a staunch follower of yoga guru Ramdev. When not considered by the BJP for the Lok Sabha ticket from Gurdaspur in 2009, he had joined the Congress. He returned to BJP after he failed to get the ticket from Congress too.

Former Punjab BJP president and one-time Pathankot MLA, Sharma is another contender for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat. He claims to have worked to get Pathankot the status of a district as well as the city to get its municipal corporation.

Other contender, former CPS and three-time MLA from Batala, Jagdish Sahni, is a transporter. Whereas Dinesh is three-time MLA from Sujanpur.

There are nine assembly seats under the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha constituency out of which the Congress had bagged seven seats in the state assembly polls held in February this year. These are Bhoa (Joginder Pal), Pathankot (Amit Vij), Gurdaspur (Barindermeet Singh Pahra), Dinanagar (Aruna Chaudhary), Qadian (Fatehjang Singh Bajwa) and Fathegarh Churian (Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa). Sujanpur seat was clinched by the BJP’s Dinesh and Batala went to Shiromani Akali Dal’s Lakhbir Singh Lodhinangal. Out of the seven winning MLAs, the Congress had inducted Bajwa and Chaudhary in its cabinet.