Former Indian Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao used to say that politics is like a game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’. The dramatis personae in the Jalandhar West by-election are typical examples of that.
The by-election was necessitated after the sitting Aam Aadmi Party legislator Sheetal Angural defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was strange and surprising as to what made Angural desert the ruling party and switch over to the BJP, which has just two MLAs in the Punjab Legislative Assembly.
In the by-election Angural lost to the ruling party’s candidate Mohinder Bhagat by a massive margin of 37, 325 votes. He did not have any specific issue with the party or the government that would require him to revolt and eventually lose his precious legislative assembly membership.
Bhagat, in turn is a former BJP leader. He is the son of veteran BJP leader and a former minister Chuni Lal Bhagat. Mohinder Bhagat unsuccessfully contested from Jalandhar West in 2017 and 2022 as a BJP candidate. He resigned from the BJP ahead of the parliamentary by-election in 2023 that was necessitated by the untimely death of the sitting Congress MP Chaudhary Santokh.
It is a sheer irony and reversal of roles, that the BJP candidate (Bhagat) who lost in 2022, won the by-election this time on the AAP ticket by defeating a candidate (Angural) who had won the elections in 2022 on the AAP ticket. Angural this time was the BJP candidate.
Interestingly, none of the three main candidates who contested in 2022, are now with the same party. While Susheel Kumar Rinku who contested as the
Congress candidate in 2022, is now with the BJP and so is Sheetal Angural who contested then as the AAP candidate and won. Mohinder Bhagat, who contested as the BJP candidate then, is now the AAP legislator.
Susheel Rinku is now in the third political party since 2022, when he contested as a Congress candidate. He was a sitting Congress MLA from Jalandhar West and lost to Angural of the AAP. He later deserted the Congress to join the AAP and contested the parliamentary by-election and won to become the MP.
However, ahead of the 2024 General Elections, he again defected, this time to the BJP. He lost to Charanjit Singh Channi of the Congress, who is also a former Punjab Chief Minister.
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