CHANDIGARH: Aam Aadmi Party’s Dakha MLA Harvinder Singh Phoolka has been chosen as the leader of the opposition while Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira will be the party’s chief whip in the 15th Punjab Assembly.
Both the leaders were elected on Wednesday morning in Delhi at a meeting held in the presence of AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. All the 20 newly elected AAP MLAs were present at the meeting along with Lok Insaf Party’s Bains brothers--Simerjeet Singh Bains and Balwinder Singh Bains. The race in AAP was between Phoolka, senior journalist Kanwar Sandhu and
Khaira.
After the meeting, Kejriwal alleged, “There was anger against the ruling Akali-BJP alliance and people were saying the AAP will sweep the polls. But in the end, AAP got barely 24 per cent votes and the SAD got almost 31 per cent. How is it possible? The party volunteers are ready to give affidavits that they voted for us.”
Similar doubts had been raised about the EVMs following the Maharashtra civic polls and the just concluded Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.
“Many countries have stopped using EVMs. Even the BJP in the past had said they can be tampered with. The Supreme Court too has said EVMs can be tampered with,” he said.
Kejriwal demanded the details of the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) be compared with EVMs as the VVPAT system was installed in 32 of the 117 constituencies in Punjab.
Hitting out at Kejriwal, Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal said, "He (Kejriwal) has lost his mental balance. He is saying things like that EVMs were tampered and votes got transferred to SAD-BJP alliance. He did not say anything when AAP had won 67 seats in Delhi.”
In the Punjab Assembly polls, the Congress received 38.4 per cent of the total number of votes, SAD-BJP alliance received 30.5 per cent of votes, while the AAP received only 23.5 per cent of votes.