Jalandhar Cantt: It's a battle of turncoats, hockey legends

Tribune News Service

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, February 14

The Jalandhar Cantt Assembly segment is expected to witness a key contest between sitting MLA and Congress candidate Pargat Singh and SAD nominee Jagbir Brar, a former Congressman and an ex-MLA from the seat.

TRADITIONALLY SPEAKING

• The voters here have always gone with the Congress barring the two terms in 2007 and 2012. It was SAD’s Jagbir Brar, who won from here in 2007, while the sitting MLA Pargat Singh won in 2012. He then contested as SAD candidate.

Voterspeak

• “The Congress government has miserably failed to keep its promises, and when they realised they are losing the ground, they had put the entire blame on former CM Capt Amarinder Singh,” said Bikran Singh, a resident of Pholariwal village. He said, “Most of the villages in the constituency are crying for attention, and the main issues such as garbage dumps, poor road infrastructure, clogged sewer etc still remain unaddressed.”
• “MLA Pargat promised that good governance would be his priority. He said several development works will begin in the constituency, but all we see is broken roads, garbage dumps and protests in the area. The Congress in all these years was solving its own conflicts, while public issues had taken a backseat,” said Mayank Mathur, a resident of Jamsher.

While Pargat is seeking his third term from the constituency, Brar, who lost to Pargat in 2012 (then a SAD candidate), is expected to pose a serious threat to the sitting MLA this time. Besides, another reason why the stakes are high for Brar to get elected from the seat is that the SAD-BSP is contesting in an alliance this time. More than 52,000 Dalits of the total 1.90 lakh voters in the Jalandhar Cantonment hold the key in a direct contest between Brar and his archrival Pargat Singh.

Meanwhile, of the total nine Assembly seats in Jalandhar district, the Cantonment constituency has its own importance. It includes villages, which have produced several hockey Olympians. Sansarpur, the cradle of hockey, which has produced over 300 hockey players, including 14 Olympians, is also part of the constituency.

But what makes the election here more interesting this time is that apart from former Olympian Pargat Singh, two more hockey players are in the fray from the seat. AAP has fielded the former centre-forward attacker Surinder Singh Sodhi, yet another Olympian, and the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha’s (SSM) has given ticket to Jaswinder Sangha, who played the sport at university level.

Interestingly, all three — Pargat, Sodhi and Sangha — are alumni of Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jalandhar, while the BJP candidate, Sarabjit Singh Makkar, a former Akali MLA, who lost to Pargat in 2017, is an outlier here with no background in sports.

With the SAD, BJP and AAP all seeking votes by promising development in the constituency in all fields, including sports, education and health, the two-time MLA from the seat Pargat Singh is facing anti-incumbency. The locals say the MLA has failed to bring in any big projects and he is simply banking on Congress’ 111 days work under CM Channi.

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