Navjot, Pargat, Boleria to get Cong ticket

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 8

The central election committee of the Congress, which met here today to discuss candidates for the upcoming Punjab elections, is learnt to have cleared all single-applicant seats as also a majority of the seats with sitting Congress lawmakers in Punjab.

The three-hour meeting chaired by party chief Sonia Gandhi saw heated exchanges over candidates between Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh and former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who heads the screening committee for state candidates.

The Tribune has learnt that the CEC agreed on newcomers Navjot Kaur Sidhu, Pargat Singh and Inderbir Boleria contesting their own Assembly seats Amritsar East, Jalandhar Cant, and Amritsar South, respectively. A source said: “That’s more or less final.”

Disagreement on many seats still prevails which is why a formal list of candidates wasn’t declared today and the decision was deferred until the weekend when another meeting of the CEC is expected.

The Tribune has learnt the CEC today dropped a few sitting legislators but it is unclear who these are. Two of the sitting MLAs to be dropped would be Preneet Kaur, who has opted out of the race in favour of her husband Amarinder Singh, and Charanjit Kaur Bajwa, who has done the same for her brother-in-law Fateh Jung in Qadian.

Single applicant seats and candidates cleared today, as recommended by the screening committee, included Patiala (Capt Amarinder Singh); Lehra (Rajinder Kaur Bhattal); Abohar (Sunil Jakhar), Guru Harsahai (Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi); Qadian (Fateh Jung Bajwa); Kapurthala (Rana Gurjeet); Khadoor Sahib (Ramanjit Sikki); Amritsar Central (OP Soni);  Raja Sansi (Sukhbinder Sarkaria) and Dinanagar (Aruna Choudhry).