SAD workers urge Harsimrat to contest from Bathinda

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Badal (Muktsar), March 24

Union Minister-cum-Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal held meetings for the second consecutive day today with SAD workers from her Bathinda parliamentary constituency. The SAD workers from Mansa Assembly constituency, which is a part of Bathinda parliamentary constituency, also met Harsimrat at her Badal village residence on Sunday in the presence of senior party leader Jagdeep Singh Nakai.

Sources in the SAD said the party workers poured their heart out to Harsimrat, promised to work hard and also gave some suggestions. A SAD worker said, “We raised our weaknesses, such as the inability to run any campaign on the social media due to lack of awareness and because of an elderly cadre. We also requested her to contest from Bathinda and put to rest speculations about her contesting from any other parliamentary constituency.”

Another SAD leader said, “Bibaji (Harsimrat) listened to the workers patiently and asked them to work hard like in the gram panchayat elections. She also said that if the votes decreased in any village, it will be their collective responsibility, not just of an individual or a group. However, at the same time, she did not confirm about contesting the election from Bathinda.” The issue of factionalism in the party was also highlighted by some workers, he said.

Notably, in the last Lok Sabha elections, Harsimrat had polled 55,869 votes from Mansa Assembly constituency, whereas her estranged brother-in-law Manpreet Singh Badal, a Congress candidate, had got 79,780 votes.

Later in the evening, Harsimrat even wrote a post on her Facebook page about today’s meetings: “Having a feedback loop is much important in my life as I constantly keep on thinking about what I have done and how I could be doing it better. And on this front, I can happily say that I am really fortunate to grow in the company of such a committed and trustworthy cadre of Shiromani Akali Dal that is always there to keep me apprising of the ground realities.”

Interestingly, she is nowadays holding long meetings with party workers but neither she nor anyone from the SAD has so far confirmed about her contesting the election for a third time in a row from Bathinda till date.