On May 5, former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and former Punjab Assembly Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the presence of BJP President JP Nadda in Delhi. The 86-year-old leader resigned from the primary membership of SAD last month, on April 19.
Charanjit Singh Atwal was born on March 15, 1937, and graduated from GGN Khalsa College, Ludhiana. He then got his LLB degree from Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has been in politics since 1957 and was elected to the Punjab State Assembly in 1977.
He was a Member of Parliament from 1985 to 1989 and then became the speaker of the Punjab assembly from 1997 to 2002. He served twice as the speaker of the Punjab Assembly.
He was the Chairman of the Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes from 1997 to 2000. He was also the Deputy Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha of India from 2004 to 2009 and represented Punjab’s Phillaur constituency.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he contested against Congress’s Santokh Singh Chaudhary from the Jalandhar constituency.
It is noteworthy Charanjit Singh Atwal’s son Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, along with several others from Punjab, have joined the BJP. Furthermore, Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal is contesting the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-poll scheduled on May 10, and the results will be declared on May 13.
The by-polls were conducted because of the demise of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary in January 2023. It is pertinent to note that since 1999, the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency has been a stronghold for the Congress.
Furthermore, four prominent political parties, Congress, BJP, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and SAD-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), are contesting this by-poll. It is the first Lok Sabha by-poll that BJP is contesting on its own after SAD broke ties with them in 2020.
Congress is fielding Karamjit Kaur, the wife of the late Santokh Chaudhary. AAP’s candidate is former legislator Sushil Rinku. He joined the Arvind Kejriwal-led party after leaving Congress. The BSP-backed SAD candidate is Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi, who is a two-time MLA.
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