3 AAP MLAs Join Congress In Punjab
As Punjab goes to poll early next year along with Uttar Pradesh and some other states, the ruling party seems to be a divided house in north-western India. It is not a classified document that its tallest leader Captain Amarendra Singh, ex-Maharaja of the chequered Patiala, is not the party’s high command’s blue-eyed boy. His detractors have conveyed their Maan Ki Baat to the three-member handpicked panel composed by the party’s bosses in Delhi. As the dissident Congress leaders are lobbying against the Captain, a move by six Punjab ministers led by Sukhjinder Randhawa and Charanjit Channi to boycott Wednesday’s virtual Cabinet meeting backfired following other ministers’ refusal to line up with them. Meanwhile, Opposition Aam Aadmi Party has suffered a jolt in the state following dissident Sukhpal Khaira and two other MLAs joining Congress at an event chaired by Captain before his departure for Delhi to meet the High Command. After quitting the Congress, Khaira had joined the AAP in December 2015. He was elected from the Bholath Assembly seat in 2017 on an AAP ticket. He resigned from the primary membership of the AAP in January 2019 and had also floated his own outfit, Punjabi Ekta Party. Interestingly, both Delhi headquartered AAP and Congress have pledged wholehearted support to the agitating farmers against three farm laws as Covid-19 has reportedly engulfed rural Punjab and GOI claiming record procurement of rice and wheat for distribution free of cost to the eight million ration cardholders across the country. Edited by PK Chakravarty. Picture courtesy: The Tribune
