Capt likely from Amritsar, Tewari back in Ludhiana

Thursday, 20/03/2014

http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=97540&boxid=58312&uid=&dat=2014-03-20

Chandigarh : Though he had been ruling out outrightly the possibility of his fighting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s name is doing the rounds for the high-stakes Amritsar seat, reports emanating from New Delhi have said.

Reports quoting sources in the Congress high command said the party thinks that Amarinder could put up a strong fight against the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, who is the BJP candidate from Amritsar.

While Amarinder himself remained incommunicado, sources close to him denied the reports and attributed these to the handiwork of the rivals of the former chief minister within the party.

“He has clearly and repeatedly said that he would not contest parliamentary elections as he wants to stay put in the state politics,” a close confidant of Amarinder reminded, while putting to rest the possibility of Permanent Invitee to the CWC taking a plunge in the Lok Sabha polls.

However, reports said that Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa, who is considered not to be on the best of terms with Amarinder Singh, has also told the party leadership that the former chief minister could be a formidable candidate to take on Jaitley.

Bajwa, a sitting MP, who had been re-nominated from Gurdaspur, had been in the past urging Amarinder and even another former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal to come forward and contest the Lok Sabha polls. Bajwa himself, claimed the sources, was reluctant to fight the elections but the party high command has decided to field all state Congress chiefs in the ensuing polls.

Meanwhile, there are reports that the Congress high command has cleared the re-nomination of Union Minister Manish Tewari from Ludhiana seat. A formal announcement to this effect is expected shortly.

Even as Tewari had been reportedly reluctant to contest and had even desired to shift to Chandigarh, the party leadership had been adamant on fielding him from Ludhiana only.

Tewari was on Tuesday discharged from a private hospital in New Delhi, where he was admitted with a cardiac problem on March 15.

So far, the Congress has declared its five candidates for Punjab besides leaving the high-stakes Bathinda seat under a poll alliance for People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) supremo Manpreet Singh Badal against his estranged sister-in-law, sitting MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who had trounced Amarinder’s son Raninder Singh by over one lakh votes during her maiden poll battle in 2009.

The Congress is yet to decide its nominees from Amritsar, Ludhiana, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Faridkot, Ferozepur and Fatehgarh Sahib seats, four of which are presently held by it and two among these MPs are even Union Ministers.

Presently, the Congress is representing eight Lok Sabha seats, the SAD four and the BJP one seat in Punjab.