Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa on Thursday took a jibe at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for fielding five cabinet ministers in Punjab rather than bringing new faces for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The party today released its first list naming eight candidates for the approaching polls.
Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal from Amritsar, Laljit Singh Bhullar from Khadoor Sahib, Gurmeet Singh Khudian from Bathinda, Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer from Sangrur, and Dr Balbir Singh from Patiala are the five cabinet ministers placed by BJP.
Punjab's ruling party also named former Congress MLA Gurpreet Singh GP and Punjabi actor Karamjit Anmol as candidates for the parliamentary elections.
Reacting to AAP's announcement, Bajwa, who is the leader of the opposition in the Punjab assembly, said the rapidly increasing "unpopularity" of the AAP can be gauged from the fact that in two years of its regime, it could not even bring new faces to contest the Lok Sabha elections.
"Out of eight candidates it announced in the first list, five are the cabinet ministers holding significant portfolios," Bajwa added.
"These candidates are responsible for some key departments of the state. However, the AAP has not explained who is going to be in charge of these departments while they will be busy campaigning for the elections," Bajwa added.
"Perhaps, the AAP is planning to snatch these portfolios from them and that is why they are being fielded as candidates for the Lok Sabha elections," Bajwa said in a statement. The AAP also "failed" to stick to its motto of giving a chance to people of humble backgrounds, he alleged.
"Out of its eight candidates, five are cabinet ministers, one (Sushil Kumar Rinku) is a sitting MP from Jalandhar, the other one (Karamjeet Anmol) is a lesser known film actor, and last one (Gurpreet Singh GP) is a perpetual defector who has travelled from Akali Dal to the PPP and then to the Congress, and finally to the AAP which is known for accommodating political opportunists," said the Qadian MLA.
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