CHANDIGARH: In a departure from tradition, Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal is likely to contest the Lok Sabha election from the Ferozepur constituency instead of the Badal stronghold of Bathinda, functionaries in the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) said on Friday.
Harsimrat, who is the wife of SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, has contested successfully from Bathinda twice. This time however, she has been making her presence felt in Ferozepur. During a recent visit to Jalalabad — Sukhbir’s Assembly constituency and one that comes under the Ferozepur LS seat — she addressed three public meetings and met party workers and the citizenry and discussed the issue of inflated power bills.
Meanwhile, SAD’s alliance partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is zeroing in on at least two popular figures to field as candidates from Amritsar and Gurdaspur. While the saffron party is looking to rope in former cricketer Harbhajan Singh to contest from the Amritsar seat, it is in talks with wife of late actor and MP Vinod Khanna, Kavita Khanna, to contest from Gurdaspur.
Harbhajan is a popular young Sikh face and enjoys the status of a cricketing icon. The BJP does not have a strong local candidate for the seat. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had contested the seat and lost to Captain Amarinder Singh in the 2014 elections. For the Gurdaspur seat, Kavita Khanna’s candidature is said to have received the support of Art of Living (AoL) founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. BJP functionaries said the party had sought to field actor Akshaye Khanna, Vinod Khanna’s son, from the seat initially, but nothing concrete surfaced.
During the 2017 by-election, Kavita was in the reckoning for a ticket from Gurdaspur but was pipped by Mumbai-based businessman Swaran Salaria, who is said to have received support from Yoga guru Ramdev. Salaria lost by a landslide and Kavita has been active in the constituency since then.
Stronghold
Bathinda has been a bastion of the Badal family. Harsimrat has contested elections twice from the seat successfully, the latest being the 2014 LS elections