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Premi5
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Posting this as it is very relevant for the Sikh community

I have no idea what will happen, but Congress have won most elections. AAP are becoming strong in India.

@proactive @5aaban @shastarSingh @Punjabiwolvesand anyone else who knows about the political scene in Panjab, please give your opinions on what will/could happen ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Punjab_Legislative_Assembly_election#Background_and_overview

2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly election

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2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly election
50px-Flag_of_India.svg.png
← 2017 20 February 2022  

All 117 seats in the Punjab Legislative Assembly
59 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
  Charanjit Singh Channi (cropped).png Bhagwant Mann Lok Sabha.jpg Sukhbir Singh Badal Official portrait 2019.jpg
Leader Charanjit Singh Channi Bhagwant Singh Maan Sukhbir Singh Badal
Party INC AAP SAD
Alliance UPA - SAD+
Leader since 2021 2017 2019
Leader's seat Chamkaur Sahib Dhuri[b] Jalalabad[a]
Last election 38.50%, 77 seats 23.72%, 20 seats 25.24%, 15 seats
Current seats 79 12 13

  BJP-Leader-Ashwani-Sharma.jpg Simarjit Singh Bains LIP.jpg
Leader Ashwani Kumar Sharma Simarjit Singh Bains
Party BJP LIP
Alliance NDA -
Leader since 2020 2016
Leader's seat Pathankot Atam Nagar
Last election 5.39%, 3 seats 1.22%, 2 seats
Current seats 5 2

Wahlkreise zur Vidhan Sabha von Punjab.svg
Assembly Constituencies of Punjab Legislative Assembly

Incumbent Chief Minister

Charanjit Singh Channi
INC

 

 

The 2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly elections will be held in Punjab on 20 February 2022 to elect the 117 members of the 16th Assembly of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. The votes will be counted and the results will be declared on 10 March 2022.

Election schedule

The election schedule was announced by the Election Commission of India on 8 January 2022.[21] However, the election date was postponed from 14 February 2022 to 20 February 2022 on account of Guru Ravidass Jayanti.[22]

S.No. Event Date Day
1. Date for Nominations 25 January 2022 Tuesday
2. Last Date for filing Nominations 1 February 2022 Tuesday
3. Date for scrutiny of nominations 2 February 2022 Wednesday
4. Last date for withdrawal of candidatures 4 February 2022 Friday
5. Date of poll 20 February 2022 Sunday
6. Date of counting 10 March 2022 Thursday

Parties and alliances

  United Progressive Alliance

No. Party Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested Male candidates Female candidates
1. Indian National Congress INC Flag Official.jpg Hand Charanjit Singh Channi Charanjit Singh Channi (cropped).png 117[c] 107 9

  Aam Aadmi Party

No. Party Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested Male candidates Female candidates
1. Aam Aadmi Party Aam Aadmi Party logo (English).svg AAP Symbol.png Bhagwant Mann Bhagwant Mann Lok Sabha.jpg 117[23] 104 13

  Shiromani Akali Dal+

220px-SAD-BSP_coalition_seats_distributi
 
Seats distribution between SAD and BSP
No. Party[19] Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested[19] Male candidates Female candidates
1. Shiromani Akali Dal SAD flag.svg Shiromani Akali Dal symbol.svg Sukhbir Singh Badal Sukhbir Singh Badal.png 97 93 4
2. Bahujan Samaj Party Elephant Bahujan Samaj Party.svg Indian Election Symbol Elephant.png Jasvir Singh Garhi Circle-icons-profile.svg 20 19 1
Total 117 112 5

  National Democratic Alliance

220px-BJP-PLC-SAD%28S%29_coalition_seats
 
Seats distribution between BJP, PLC and SAD(S).
No. Party[24] Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested[25] Male candidates Female candidates
1. Bharatiya Janata Party BJP flag.svg BJP election symbol.png Ashwani Kumar Sharma BJP-Leader-Ashwani-Sharma.jpg 66 61 5
2. Punjab Lok Congress No image available.svg Election Symbol Hockey and Ball.png Captain Amarinder Singh Amarinder Singh.jpg 36 34 2
3. Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt) No image available.svg Election Symbol Telephone.png Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.jpg 15 14 1
Total 117 108 8

  Sanyukt Samaj Morcha+

220px-SSM-SSP_coalition_seats_distributi
 
Seats distribution between SSM and SSP.
No. Party[26][27] Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested[28] Male candidates Female candidates
1. Sanyukt Samaj Morcha
contesting as Independents[29]
No image available.svg No image available.svg Balbir Singh Rajewal Balbir Singh Rajewal. President, Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU Rajewal). 01 (cropped).jpg TBD TBD TBD
2. Sanyukt Sangharsh Party No image available.svg Election Symbol Cup & Saucer.png Gurnam Singh Charuni Circle-icons-profile.svg 10 10 0
3. Communist Party of India CPI-banner.svg Indian Election Symbol Ears of Corn and Sickle.png Bant Singh Brar Circle-icons-profile.svg TBD TBD TBD
Total TBD TBD 0

Others

No. Party Flag Symbol Leader Photo Seats contested Male candidates Female candidates
1. Lok Insaaf Party No image available.svg Election Symbol Letter Box.png Simarjit Singh Bains Simarjit Singh Bains LIP.jpg 34[30][31] 34 0
2. Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) Flag.jpg Indian Election Symbol Hammer Sickle and Star.png Sukhwinder Singh Sekhon Circle-icons-profile.svg 14 TBD TBD
3. Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation CPIML LIBERATION FLAG.jpg Flag Logo of CPIML.png Sukhdarshan Singh Natt Circle-icons-profile.svg 11[32] TBD TBD

Candidates

AAP CM candidate Bhagwant Mann is contesting from the Dhuri.[33]

Congress leader and CM Charanjit Singh Channi is contesting from Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur, and former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal is contesting from Lehragaga from INC.[34]

Former CM, Prakash Singh Badal, member of Shiromani Akali Dal, is contesting from Lambi. While SAD-BSP alliance’s CM candidate Sukhbir Singh Badal is contesting from Jalalabad. Former CM, Amarinder Singh, member of Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) is contesting from Patiala Urban.[35]

 

 

 

 

 
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https://theprint.in/politics/beyond-badals-and-amarinder-four-political-families-look-to-regain-lost-glory-in-punjab/816260/

 

Beyond Badals and Amarinder, four political families look to regain lost glory in Punjab

 

Grandsons of eminent figures — ex-CMs Partap Singh Kairon & Beant Singh, ex-Union minister & Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar, Akali leader Gurcharan Tohra — are in fray in state polls.

30 January, 2022 02:00 pm IST
 
 
 
 
 
(Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint (Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint
Text Size: A- A+
 

Chandigarh: The Punjab assembly elections on 20 February will decide the electoral fortunes not only of the state’s two most prominent families — the Badals and the dynasty of Captain Amarinder Singh, former Maharajas of Patiala — but also of the heirs of those fading clans who once dominated the state’s political space.

The kin of half a dozen former chief ministers of Punjab, and of former top Sikh leaders and leading politicians, are in the fray in these elections. ThePrint profiles four such leaders, and the legacies they seek to uphold or reclaim. 

Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon

Senior Akali leader Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon (62), who is contesting from the Patti seat in the Majha region, is the grandson of former Congress chief minister Partap Singh Kairon — considered one of the most eminent leaders of post-partition Punjab.

The elder Kairon began his career as a leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) before joining the Congress in 1941. Following Partition, he was responsible as rehabilitation minister for managing the huge influx of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan into Punjab, and helping them settle down.

He served as chief minister of Punjab for eight years (1956-1964), before Haryana was carved out of the state in 1966. He is credited with building several modern-day institutions in Punjab and Haryana. However, his family faced allegations of corruption, and although an inquiry exonerated him of the major charges, he resigned as chief minister in 1964. He was assassinated in what’s now Haryana the following year, while he was on his way from Delhi to Chandigarh. The assassins, who had a personal grudge against Kairon, were hanged in 1969.

Kairon’s two sons, Surinder Singh and Gurinder Singh, also entered politics, with Surinder serving as both an MLA and an MP. However, while Gurinder remained in the Congress, Surinder joined the SAD and married his son Adaish to Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal’s daughter, Praneet Kaur.

Adaish, an engineer who did his MBA in the US, is a four-time MLA from Patti. He served as food and civil supplies minister in the Badal government from 2012 to 2017. In the upcoming polls, he faces his old opponent, Harminder Singh Gill of the Congress, who defeated him in Patti in 2017.  

 

Also read: Channi and Sidhu put Rahul Gandhi on notice over Congress’ Punjab CM face


Kanwarveer Singh Tohra

Kanwarveer Singh Tohra is the grandson of Akali stalwart Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who was known as the ‘Pope of the Sikhs’. Kanwarveer  joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 11 January with his wife.  He is the son of Kuldeep Kaur — Gurcharan Singh Tohra’s adopted daughter — and former Akali minister Harmail Singh. Kanwarveer is now the BJP’s candidate in the Amloh constituency. 

A major figure in Sikh politics, Tohra developed his own rebellious path within the Akali Dal and earned the sobriquet of “forever dissenter”. He served for a record 27 years as president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the body that controls all historical Sikh shrines.  

Considered to be a hardliner, Tohra was seen as soft on Sikh militant groups led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. He was president of the SGPC during Operation Blue Star, the 1984 military operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple.

Tohra dabbled in electoral politics and was elected to the Rajya Sabha multiple times, although his mainstay remained Sikh religious affairs. His son-in-law, Harmail Singh, won from the Dakala constituency in the 1997 assembly elections and became a minister in Badal’s cabinet.

Badal and Tohra had a falling out in 1998, which led to the former having the latter removed as SGPC president and expelling him from the SAD. Harmail also resigned from Badal’s cabinet. 

Tohra then formed his own party, the Sarv Hind Shiromani Akali Dal. But when both his party and the SAD were defeated in the 2002 assembly elections, Badal and Tohra reconciled and the two parties merged in 2003. Tohra died of a heart attack in 2004.

Harmail unsuccessfully contested the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections from Dakala on an Akali ticket. Meanwhile, Kuldeep Kaur was elected as a member of the SGPC, a post she continues to hold. Their elder son, Harinder Pal, became senior vice president of the Youth Akali Dal.

Kuldeep contested as an SAD candidate in the Patiala Rural constituency in the 2012 assembly elections, but was defeated. The family then joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the 2017 polls, in which Kuldeep contested from the Sanour seat but lost. The family returned to the Akali fold ahead of the 2019 parliamentary polls, but Kanwarveer joined the BJP in January. 

Kanwarveer, an engineer and MBA graduate, will be contesting elections for the first time.


Also read: Majha votes, Punjab follows? Not just Sidhu vs Majithia, here’s why all eyes are on this region


Gurkirat Kotli

Gurkirat Kotli (49), the sitting Congress MLA from Khanna, who is fighting to retain his seat, is the grandson of former chief minister Beant Singh.

Beant Singh entered politics after a brief stint in the Army, and rose from the ranks of the Congress to finally reach the top in 1992, when he took over as chief minister. 

Credited with ending decades of militancy in Punjab, Beant Singh paid the price with his own life. He was assassinated by Sikh militants using a human bomb in 1995.

Beant Singh’s eldest son, Tej Prakash, was inducted into the cabinet by the next chief minister, Harcharan Singh Brar, and won from the family seat of Payal several times. But it was his younger son, Swaranjit, who Beant Singh had groomed for politics. However, Swaranjit had died in a car accident in 1985. 

Swaranjit’s son, Ravneet Bittu, was chosen by Rahul Gandhi to contest the parliamentary constituency of Anandpur Sahib in 2009, which he won. He went on to win the Ludhiana Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and 2019. 

Beant Singh’s youngest child, Gurkanwal Kaur, also entered active politics and won the Jalandhar Cantonment seat in 2002. She was a minister in Capt Amarinder’s cabinet during his first term as CM (2002-2007), but was defeated in the 2007 elections.

After 2008, the family’s traditional seat of Payal was converted into a reserved constituency. Tej Prakash’s son, Gurkirat Kotli, contested from Khanna and won as a Congress candidate in 2012 and 2017. Kotli is the name of the village near Payal where Beant Singh’s family settled after Partition.

After the Congress removed Capt Amarinder Singh as chief minister in September last year, Kotli was included in Charanjit Singh Channi’s new cabinet, despite some opposition from within the party due to Kotli’s controversial past. 

Kotli was accused of raping and molesting a French tourist who had visited Punjab in 1994. The charge came to haunt him again last year when the National Commission for Women sought a report on the case from the Punjab government.


 


Sandeep Jakhar

42-year-old Sandeep Jakhar, is the youngest member of one of the most prominent Hindu Jat political families in Punjab. Grandson of Balram Jakhar, the eminent farmer leader from Rajasthan who made Punjab his home, Sandeep is contesting as Congress candidate from the family’s pocket borough of Abohar.

Balram Jakhar, a Sanskrit scholar, was mentored by Swami Keshwanand, a social reformer. Jakhar joined the Congress and was first elected to the Punjab assembly in 1972 from Abohar, going on to become a deputy minister. He won the seat again in 1977. Parkash Singh Badal took over as chief minister for the second time that year, and Jakhar was chosen as leader of the opposition. 

An Indira Gandhi loyalist, Jakhar moved to central politics in 1980 as Lok Sabha MP from Ferozepur, and from 1984 to 1989 and 1991 to 1996 from Sikar in Rajasthan. He remains the longest-serving speaker of the Lok Sabha, from 1980 to 1989.

In 1991, he was inducted into the P.V. Narasimha Rao cabinet as agriculture minister. He was elected to the Lok Sabha again from Bikaner in 1998, and served for a year. He was governor of Madhya Pradesh from 2004 to 2009, and died in 2016.

The year Jakhar shifted his focus to central politics, his eldest son, Sajjan, entered active politics in Punjab. Sajjan first became MLA from Abohar in 1980, but lost the seat to BJP in 1985. He wrested it back in 1992, but was defeated in 1997. He also served as the state’s agriculture minister.

Sajjan’s son, Ajay Vir, an agriculturist, heads the Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers’ forum. He was chairperson of the Punjab State Farmers’ & Farm Workers’ Commission till last year, but resigned “due to changed circumstances in the state” after Captain Amarinder was removed, and his uncle, Sunil Jakhar, was overlooked for the chief minister’s post.

Balram Jakhar’s youngest son Sunil won the Abohar seat three times consecutively from 2002 to 2012. He served as leader of the opposition from 2012 to 2017. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Gurdaspur in a 2017 bypoll, and also headed the state Congress until last year, when he was replaced by Navjot Singh Sidhu. He was tipped to be chief minister after Amarinder’s removal, but it wasn’t to be.

Jakhar’s middle son, Surinder, was involved in the cooperative movement. He served as chairman of Asia’s cooperative fertiliser giant, IFFCO, for multiple terms. Surinder was killed while cleaning his gun at his farmhouse in 2011. 

Surinder’s son, Sandeep, was educated at Mayo College, Ajmer and later in Florida. He worked in the US for 10 years before returning to Punjab to enter politics.

(Edited by Rohan Manoj)

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12 hours ago, Premi5 said:

https://theprint.in/politics/beyond-badals-and-amarinder-four-political-families-look-to-regain-lost-glory-in-punjab/816260/

 

Beyond Badals and Amarinder, four political families look to regain lost glory in Punjab

 

Grandsons of eminent figures — ex-CMs Partap Singh Kairon & Beant Singh, ex-Union minister & Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar, Akali leader Gurcharan Tohra — are in fray in state polls.

30 January, 2022 02:00 pm IST
 
 
 
 
 
(Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint (Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint
Text Size: A- A+
 

Chandigarh: The Punjab assembly elections on 20 February will decide the electoral fortunes not only of the state’s two most prominent families — the Badals and the dynasty of Captain Amarinder Singh, former Maharajas of Patiala — but also of the heirs of those fading clans who once dominated the state’s political space.

The kin of half a dozen former chief ministers of Punjab, and of former top Sikh leaders and leading politicians, are in the fray in these elections. ThePrint profiles four such leaders, and the legacies they seek to uphold or reclaim. 

Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon

Senior Akali leader Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon (62), who is contesting from the Patti seat in the Majha region, is the grandson of former Congress chief minister Partap Singh Kairon — considered one of the most eminent leaders of post-partition Punjab.

The elder Kairon began his career as a leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) before joining the Congress in 1941. Following Partition, he was responsible as rehabilitation minister for managing the huge influx of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan into Punjab, and helping them settle down.

He served as chief minister of Punjab for eight years (1956-1964), before Haryana was carved out of the state in 1966. He is credited with building several modern-day institutions in Punjab and Haryana. However, his family faced allegations of corruption, and although an inquiry exonerated him of the major charges, he resigned as chief minister in 1964. He was assassinated in what’s now Haryana the following year, while he was on his way from Delhi to Chandigarh. The assassins, who had a personal grudge against Kairon, were hanged in 1969.

Kairon’s two sons, Surinder Singh and Gurinder Singh, also entered politics, with Surinder serving as both an MLA and an MP. However, while Gurinder remained in the Congress, Surinder joined the SAD and married his son Adaish to Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal’s daughter, Praneet Kaur.

Adaish, an engineer who did his MBA in the US, is a four-time MLA from Patti. He served as food and civil supplies minister in the Badal government from 2012 to 2017. In the upcoming polls, he faces his old opponent, Harminder Singh Gill of the Congress, who defeated him in Patti in 2017.  

 

Also read: Channi and Sidhu put Rahul Gandhi on notice over Congress’ Punjab CM face


Kanwarveer Singh Tohra

Kanwarveer Singh Tohra is the grandson of Akali stalwart Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who was known as the ‘Pope of the Sikhs’. Kanwarveer  joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 11 January with his wife.  He is the son of Kuldeep Kaur — Gurcharan Singh Tohra’s adopted daughter — and former Akali minister Harmail Singh. Kanwarveer is now the BJP’s candidate in the Amloh constituency. 

A major figure in Sikh politics, Tohra developed his own rebellious path within the Akali Dal and earned the sobriquet of “forever dissenter”. He served for a record 27 years as president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the body that controls all historical Sikh shrines.  

Considered to be a hardliner, Tohra was seen as soft on Sikh militant groups led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. He was president of the SGPC during Operation Blue Star, the 1984 military operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple.

Tohra dabbled in electoral politics and was elected to the Rajya Sabha multiple times, although his mainstay remained Sikh religious affairs. His son-in-law, Harmail Singh, won from the Dakala constituency in the 1997 assembly elections and became a minister in Badal’s cabinet.

Badal and Tohra had a falling out in 1998, which led to the former having the latter removed as SGPC president and expelling him from the SAD. Harmail also resigned from Badal’s cabinet. 

Tohra then formed his own party, the Sarv Hind Shiromani Akali Dal. But when both his party and the SAD were defeated in the 2002 assembly elections, Badal and Tohra reconciled and the two parties merged in 2003. Tohra died of a heart attack in 2004.

Harmail unsuccessfully contested the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections from Dakala on an Akali ticket. Meanwhile, Kuldeep Kaur was elected as a member of the SGPC, a post she continues to hold. Their elder son, Harinder Pal, became senior vice president of the Youth Akali Dal.

Kuldeep contested as an SAD candidate in the Patiala Rural constituency in the 2012 assembly elections, but was defeated. The family then joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the 2017 polls, in which Kuldeep contested from the Sanour seat but lost. The family returned to the Akali fold ahead of the 2019 parliamentary polls, but Kanwarveer joined the BJP in January. 

Kanwarveer, an engineer and MBA graduate, will be contesting elections for the first time.


Also read: Majha votes, Punjab follows? Not just Sidhu vs Majithia, here’s why all eyes are on this region


Gurkirat Kotli

Gurkirat Kotli (49), the sitting Congress MLA from Khanna, who is fighting to retain his seat, is the grandson of former chief minister Beant Singh.

Beant Singh entered politics after a brief stint in the Army, and rose from the ranks of the Congress to finally reach the top in 1992, when he took over as chief minister. 

Credited with ending decades of militancy in Punjab, Beant Singh paid the price with his own life. He was assassinated by Sikh militants using a human bomb in 1995.

Beant Singh’s eldest son, Tej Prakash, was inducted into the cabinet by the next chief minister, Harcharan Singh Brar, and won from the family seat of Payal several times. But it was his younger son, Swaranjit, who Beant Singh had groomed for politics. However, Swaranjit had died in a car accident in 1985. 

Swaranjit’s son, Ravneet Bittu, was chosen by Rahul Gandhi to contest the parliamentary constituency of Anandpur Sahib in 2009, which he won. He went on to win the Ludhiana Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and 2019. 

Beant Singh’s youngest child, Gurkanwal Kaur, also entered active politics and won the Jalandhar Cantonment seat in 2002. She was a minister in Capt Amarinder’s cabinet during his first term as CM (2002-2007), but was defeated in the 2007 elections.

After 2008, the family’s traditional seat of Payal was converted into a reserved constituency. Tej Prakash’s son, Gurkirat Kotli, contested from Khanna and won as a Congress candidate in 2012 and 2017. Kotli is the name of the village near Payal where Beant Singh’s family settled after Partition.

After the Congress removed Capt Amarinder Singh as chief minister in September last year, Kotli was included in Charanjit Singh Channi’s new cabinet, despite some opposition from within the party due to Kotli’s controversial past. 

Kotli was accused of raping and molesting a French tourist who had visited Punjab in 1994. The charge came to haunt him again last year when the National Commission for Women sought a report on the case from the Punjab government.


 


Sandeep Jakhar

42-year-old Sandeep Jakhar, is the youngest member of one of the most prominent Hindu Jat political families in Punjab. Grandson of Balram Jakhar, the eminent farmer leader from Rajasthan who made Punjab his home, Sandeep is contesting as Congress candidate from the family’s pocket borough of Abohar.

Balram Jakhar, a Sanskrit scholar, was mentored by Swami Keshwanand, a social reformer. Jakhar joined the Congress and was first elected to the Punjab assembly in 1972 from Abohar, going on to become a deputy minister. He won the seat again in 1977. Parkash Singh Badal took over as chief minister for the second time that year, and Jakhar was chosen as leader of the opposition. 

An Indira Gandhi loyalist, Jakhar moved to central politics in 1980 as Lok Sabha MP from Ferozepur, and from 1984 to 1989 and 1991 to 1996 from Sikar in Rajasthan. He remains the longest-serving speaker of the Lok Sabha, from 1980 to 1989.

In 1991, he was inducted into the P.V. Narasimha Rao cabinet as agriculture minister. He was elected to the Lok Sabha again from Bikaner in 1998, and served for a year. He was governor of Madhya Pradesh from 2004 to 2009, and died in 2016.

The year Jakhar shifted his focus to central politics, his eldest son, Sajjan, entered active politics in Punjab. Sajjan first became MLA from Abohar in 1980, but lost the seat to BJP in 1985. He wrested it back in 1992, but was defeated in 1997. He also served as the state’s agriculture minister.

Sajjan’s son, Ajay Vir, an agriculturist, heads the Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers’ forum. He was chairperson of the Punjab State Farmers’ & Farm Workers’ Commission till last year, but resigned “due to changed circumstances in the state” after Captain Amarinder was removed, and his uncle, Sunil Jakhar, was overlooked for the chief minister’s post.

Balram Jakhar’s youngest son Sunil won the Abohar seat three times consecutively from 2002 to 2012. He served as leader of the opposition from 2012 to 2017. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Gurdaspur in a 2017 bypoll, and also headed the state Congress until last year, when he was replaced by Navjot Singh Sidhu. He was tipped to be chief minister after Amarinder’s removal, but it wasn’t to be.

Jakhar’s middle son, Surinder, was involved in the cooperative movement. He served as chairman of Asia’s cooperative fertiliser giant, IFFCO, for multiple terms. Surinder was killed while cleaning his gun at his farmhouse in 2011. 

Surinder’s son, Sandeep, was educated at Mayo College, Ajmer and later in Florida. He worked in the US for 10 years before returning to Punjab to enter politics.

(Edited by Rohan Manoj)

I believe no party is will benefit Panjab and Sikhs but some are less worse than others. 

Panjab's regions play an important role in politics. Malwa is the "Zamindari belt" and the largest political region of Panjab (69/117 seats, most CM's are from here), Majha is the "Panthic belt" with 25 seats and Doaba is the "Dalit & NRI belt" with the lowest of 23 seats. 

AAP is much stronger in Malwa compared to Majha and Doaba area, CM face Bhagwant Mann is also from Malwa and he's a liked person there. AAP will probably win from western Malwa as Akali Dal's historical presence in this area declined.  

Doaba has a large Dalit and Hindu votebank, more likely to go towards Congress. 

I don't think one party will form a complete majority. 

https://theprint.in/politics/malwa-majha-doaba-divided-by-rivers-each-punjab-region-has-distinct-political-identity/814388/

 

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2 hours ago, Premi5 said:

https://theprint.in/politics/beyond-badals-and-amarinder-four-political-families-look-to-regain-lost-glory-in-punjab/816260/

 

Beyond Badals and Amarinder, four political families look to regain lost glory in Punjab

 

Grandsons of eminent figures — ex-CMs Partap Singh Kairon & Beant Singh, ex-Union minister & Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar, Akali leader Gurcharan Tohra — are in fray in state polls.

30 January, 2022 02:00 pm IST
 
 
 
 
 
(Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint (Clockwise from top left) Beant Singh, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Gurkirat Kotli, Kanwarveer Singh Tohra, Sandeep Jakhar, Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon, Balram Jakhar & Partap Singh Kairon | Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint
Text Size: A- A+
 

Chandigarh: The Punjab assembly elections on 20 February will decide the electoral fortunes not only of the state’s two most prominent families — the Badals and the dynasty of Captain Amarinder Singh, former Maharajas of Patiala — but also of the heirs of those fading clans who once dominated the state’s political space.

The kin of half a dozen former chief ministers of Punjab, and of former top Sikh leaders and leading politicians, are in the fray in these elections. ThePrint profiles four such leaders, and the legacies they seek to uphold or reclaim. 

Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon

Senior Akali leader Adaish Pratap Singh Kairon (62), who is contesting from the Patti seat in the Majha region, is the grandson of former Congress chief minister Partap Singh Kairon — considered one of the most eminent leaders of post-partition Punjab.

The elder Kairon began his career as a leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) before joining the Congress in 1941. Following Partition, he was responsible as rehabilitation minister for managing the huge influx of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan into Punjab, and helping them settle down.

He served as chief minister of Punjab for eight years (1956-1964), before Haryana was carved out of the state in 1966. He is credited with building several modern-day institutions in Punjab and Haryana. However, his family faced allegations of corruption, and although an inquiry exonerated him of the major charges, he resigned as chief minister in 1964. He was assassinated in what’s now Haryana the following year, while he was on his way from Delhi to Chandigarh. The assassins, who had a personal grudge against Kairon, were hanged in 1969.

Kairon’s two sons, Surinder Singh and Gurinder Singh, also entered politics, with Surinder serving as both an MLA and an MP. However, while Gurinder remained in the Congress, Surinder joined the SAD and married his son Adaish to Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal’s daughter, Praneet Kaur.

Adaish, an engineer who did his MBA in the US, is a four-time MLA from Patti. He served as food and civil supplies minister in the Badal government from 2012 to 2017. In the upcoming polls, he faces his old opponent, Harminder Singh Gill of the Congress, who defeated him in Patti in 2017.  

 

Also read: Channi and Sidhu put Rahul Gandhi on notice over Congress’ Punjab CM face


Kanwarveer Singh Tohra

Kanwarveer Singh Tohra is the grandson of Akali stalwart Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who was known as the ‘Pope of the Sikhs’. Kanwarveer  joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 11 January with his wife.  He is the son of Kuldeep Kaur — Gurcharan Singh Tohra’s adopted daughter — and former Akali minister Harmail Singh. Kanwarveer is now the BJP’s candidate in the Amloh constituency. 

A major figure in Sikh politics, Tohra developed his own rebellious path within the Akali Dal and earned the sobriquet of “forever dissenter”. He served for a record 27 years as president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the body that controls all historical Sikh shrines.  

Considered to be a hardliner, Tohra was seen as soft on Sikh militant groups led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. He was president of the SGPC during Operation Blue Star, the 1984 military operation to flush out militants from the Golden Temple.

Tohra dabbled in electoral politics and was elected to the Rajya Sabha multiple times, although his mainstay remained Sikh religious affairs. His son-in-law, Harmail Singh, won from the Dakala constituency in the 1997 assembly elections and became a minister in Badal’s cabinet.

Badal and Tohra had a falling out in 1998, which led to the former having the latter removed as SGPC president and expelling him from the SAD. Harmail also resigned from Badal’s cabinet. 

Tohra then formed his own party, the Sarv Hind Shiromani Akali Dal. But when both his party and the SAD were defeated in the 2002 assembly elections, Badal and Tohra reconciled and the two parties merged in 2003. Tohra died of a heart attack in 2004.

Harmail unsuccessfully contested the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections from Dakala on an Akali ticket. Meanwhile, Kuldeep Kaur was elected as a member of the SGPC, a post she continues to hold. Their elder son, Harinder Pal, became senior vice president of the Youth Akali Dal.

Kuldeep contested as an SAD candidate in the Patiala Rural constituency in the 2012 assembly elections, but was defeated. The family then joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the 2017 polls, in which Kuldeep contested from the Sanour seat but lost. The family returned to the Akali fold ahead of the 2019 parliamentary polls, but Kanwarveer joined the BJP in January. 

Kanwarveer, an engineer and MBA graduate, will be contesting elections for the first time.


Also read: Majha votes, Punjab follows? Not just Sidhu vs Majithia, here’s why all eyes are on this region


Gurkirat Kotli

Gurkirat Kotli (49), the sitting Congress MLA from Khanna, who is fighting to retain his seat, is the grandson of former chief minister Beant Singh.

Beant Singh entered politics after a brief stint in the Army, and rose from the ranks of the Congress to finally reach the top in 1992, when he took over as chief minister. 

Credited with ending decades of militancy in Punjab, Beant Singh paid the price with his own life. He was assassinated by Sikh militants using a human bomb in 1995.

Beant Singh’s eldest son, Tej Prakash, was inducted into the cabinet by the next chief minister, Harcharan Singh Brar, and won from the family seat of Payal several times. But it was his younger son, Swaranjit, who Beant Singh had groomed for politics. However, Swaranjit had died in a car accident in 1985. 

Swaranjit’s son, Ravneet Bittu, was chosen by Rahul Gandhi to contest the parliamentary constituency of Anandpur Sahib in 2009, which he won. He went on to win the Ludhiana Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and 2019. 

Beant Singh’s youngest child, Gurkanwal Kaur, also entered active politics and won the Jalandhar Cantonment seat in 2002. She was a minister in Capt Amarinder’s cabinet during his first term as CM (2002-2007), but was defeated in the 2007 elections.

After 2008, the family’s traditional seat of Payal was converted into a reserved constituency. Tej Prakash’s son, Gurkirat Kotli, contested from Khanna and won as a Congress candidate in 2012 and 2017. Kotli is the name of the village near Payal where Beant Singh’s family settled after Partition.

After the Congress removed Capt Amarinder Singh as chief minister in September last year, Kotli was included in Charanjit Singh Channi’s new cabinet, despite some opposition from within the party due to Kotli’s controversial past. 

Kotli was accused of raping and molesting a French tourist who had visited Punjab in 1994. The charge came to haunt him again last year when the National Commission for Women sought a report on the case from the Punjab government.


 


Sandeep Jakhar

42-year-old Sandeep Jakhar, is the youngest member of one of the most prominent Hindu Jat political families in Punjab. Grandson of Balram Jakhar, the eminent farmer leader from Rajasthan who made Punjab his home, Sandeep is contesting as Congress candidate from the family’s pocket borough of Abohar.

Balram Jakhar, a Sanskrit scholar, was mentored by Swami Keshwanand, a social reformer. Jakhar joined the Congress and was first elected to the Punjab assembly in 1972 from Abohar, going on to become a deputy minister. He won the seat again in 1977. Parkash Singh Badal took over as chief minister for the second time that year, and Jakhar was chosen as leader of the opposition. 

An Indira Gandhi loyalist, Jakhar moved to central politics in 1980 as Lok Sabha MP from Ferozepur, and from 1984 to 1989 and 1991 to 1996 from Sikar in Rajasthan. He remains the longest-serving speaker of the Lok Sabha, from 1980 to 1989.

In 1991, he was inducted into the P.V. Narasimha Rao cabinet as agriculture minister. He was elected to the Lok Sabha again from Bikaner in 1998, and served for a year. He was governor of Madhya Pradesh from 2004 to 2009, and died in 2016.

The year Jakhar shifted his focus to central politics, his eldest son, Sajjan, entered active politics in Punjab. Sajjan first became MLA from Abohar in 1980, but lost the seat to BJP in 1985. He wrested it back in 1992, but was defeated in 1997. He also served as the state’s agriculture minister.

Sajjan’s son, Ajay Vir, an agriculturist, heads the Bharat Krishak Samaj, a farmers’ forum. He was chairperson of the Punjab State Farmers’ & Farm Workers’ Commission till last year, but resigned “due to changed circumstances in the state” after Captain Amarinder was removed, and his uncle, Sunil Jakhar, was overlooked for the chief minister’s post.

Balram Jakhar’s youngest son Sunil won the Abohar seat three times consecutively from 2002 to 2012. He served as leader of the opposition from 2012 to 2017. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Gurdaspur in a 2017 bypoll, and also headed the state Congress until last year, when he was replaced by Navjot Singh Sidhu. He was tipped to be chief minister after Amarinder’s removal, but it wasn’t to be.

Jakhar’s middle son, Surinder, was involved in the cooperative movement. He served as chairman of Asia’s cooperative fertiliser giant, IFFCO, for multiple terms. Surinder was killed while cleaning his gun at his farmhouse in 2011. 

Surinder’s son, Sandeep, was educated at Mayo College, Ajmer and later in Florida. He worked in the US for 10 years before returning to Punjab to enter politics.

(Edited by Rohan Manoj)

They are all slaves of delhi. None of them are going to do anything. We can only wait for india to collapse.Until then nothing can happen. We cannot elect any person who will stand for sikhs because these people wont let it happen.

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24 minutes ago, proudkaur21 said:

They are all slaves of delhi. None of them are going to do anything. We can only wait for indian to collapse.Until then nothing can happen. We cannot elect any person who will stand for sikhs because these people wont let it happen.

Some Sikhs are going to politic no matter what. Often the narcicissts. Just have to let them. 

Meanwhile we should have our own governments locally into globally.

As was done before zionists had israel taken from some actual jews, and given to them  

Sikhs actually have claim to land and are who they say they are. 

And if we organize as a Paanth a homeland becomes less necessary and far easier to get. It's always easier to get what you don't need. 

We should be prepared for the collapse of any government, governments or the whole world. 

We don't have to be paranoid, bunkered up, sure that it's coming any day like christian prepper sects, but we should just always be prepared for Dharam Yudh. It's a good lifestyle, and it doesn't matter if things don't go down, you just rotate the foods, and eat them anyway and turn them into Langar and practice with the weapons. 

Having rural Bungas to go gather at is a benefit all the time, not just for apocolypse or disaster. 

And then when things go south, we're simply ready to organize outsiders into faujs under us and secure the water and food in our areas for everyone so nobody starves. And we come out on top. This is how Khalsa Raj happens at least in part. There has to be reasons demonstrated for us to be ASKED to take over. That's a first. We need to earn it by showing we are the ones for the job. 

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We need to be succesful, enough, in the world. Have a lot of time left for the Paanth. So you can't be chasing Maya, just dealing in it as you go.  Be narc and pedo proof. Be armed, trained and prepared. Invest our resources in tangible, beneficial things, not superficiality and plastic waste. 

And clean water, farmland for the Langars and beyond, herds, city and rural holdings are real investments. Weapons, and tools. Real investments. Vehicles for capability not looks? Real invesments. 

Pre electronic and electronic items both. Real investment. 

Knowing? Knowing how to do things from scratch? That's a real education and a real investment. 

Our kids should learn how to build fire, purify water, make clothes just as much as they learn science, technology, engineering, maths and medicines. 

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You know you can melt plastic into diesel fuel? Might want to consider a diesel unless you know how to make your own electricity. 

Diesel is where it's at btw. It's the most stable technology at the apex of the mech into electric part of developement. So it's the highest level fallback for collapse. 

Way easier to make diesel to abide by until things recover.  

If emp by nature or war trashes all the tech we're gonna wish we had an old version of everything around. Especially Saroop and a warm lit room to read it in. 

Machining custom parts for diesel vehicles is a great educational model in engineering and maintenance. 

The Paanth needs a motor pool. 

Look at a military base. That's everything the Paanth needs, plus our own water and farms. 

That means we need our own medical, our own security forces, our own education and child care, our own stores, our own library, our own motor pool, our own lands etc. 

And every locality should ally with surrounding Sikhs to make as many stand alone, localized versions of this as possible, that are all committed to collaborating as a Paanth and viewing themselves as a Paanth. 

And we only need a little time and voice in politics, social media etc, to keep us from getting smeared while we tend our real business. 

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You know who has a lot of things going for them actually, and don't laugh, Jehovah Witnesses. Don't join or anything. But studying them as a cult, I've realized they aren't as cultish as people say and most their beliefs are pretty on point. And the ones I grew up around are really solid people. I wish I'd been old enough to be aware of how on point their christianity was at the time. Some sex allegations, but actually if you look at the numbers it shows they handled it fairly well. Not perfectly. Not like we would. But better than the other christians for sure. 

And it's all funded without college degrees. We can still get degrees, it just shows working people in congregation can afford their families and a religous body without chasing Maya. In the modern day. 

Best example of by us, for us, for everybody, from nothing, survival into thrival? Guru Sahiban and Purtan Gursikhi. 

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"Winnerjit Singh Goldy...."

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ludhiana/its-all-about-meeting-people-and-getting-on-to-their-phone-screens-7716971/

‘It’s all about meeting people and getting on to their phone screens’

Winnerjit launched his campaign soon after his name was declared on December 4.

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Written by Raakhi Jagga | Ludhiana |
Updated: January 11, 2022 7:19:18 am
Winnerjit-singh.jpgSAD candidate from Sangrur Winnerjit Singh Goldy recording a video for the voters of the area.

It’s a cold day but Winnerjit Singh Goldy, SAD candidate from Sangrur district, is all smiles as he walks down the alleys of Bhuttiwal village, meeting senior citizens and seeking their votes with his hands folded.

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