Chandigarh: The lone Member of Parliament (MP) from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Lok Sabha, Sushil Rinku, along with AAP Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Sheetal Angural, joined the BJP Wednesday.
Rinku, the sitting MP in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency, was announced as the AAP candidate from Jalandhar for the upcoming parliamentary elections. He was among the eight candidates finalised from Punjab by the AAP earlier this month. Angural is the sitting MLA in Jalandhar West.
In Punjab, Rinku is the second sitting MP to join the BJP in the past two days. On Tuesday, senior Congress leader and MP from Ludhiana, Ravneet Singh Bittu, joined the BJP. Bittu is the grandson of slain former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh.
Preneet Kaur, the Congress MP from Patiala, also joined the BJP earlier this month. The Congress last year had suspended Kaur for alleged anti-party activities.
Welcoming Rinku and Angural into the party, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs and Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said the BJP is the largest party in the world, and people from all walks of life are joining it.
Rinku said he switched to the BJP because the AAP was not carrying out development work, and he is committed to the development of Jalandhar.
After Rinku joined the BJP, Punjab BJP chief Sunil Kumar Jakhar told the media that “more is yet to come”, hinting at the party poaching more leaders from other parties in Punjab. “What can be more shameful for the AAP than their lone MP also leaving them?” Jakhar added.
#WATCH | Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar says, "Congress and AAP are two sides of the same coin. Sushil Rinku joined the party today…He is the only Lok Sabha MP of (AAP) and they (AAP) should be ashamed… " pic.twitter.com/xjCERdGoG0
— ANI (@ANI) March 27, 2024
The BJP Tuesday announced it would contest the parliamentary elections alone in Punjab after talks of an alliance with former partner Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) failed over seat sharing.
Sources in the party, however, said the BJP does not have enough winning leaders to contest all 13 seats of the Lok Sabha. Most of those joining the BJP now are expected to be fielded as candidates, added the sources.
Angural and Rinku are widely known as political adversaries, having fought the 2022 assembly elections against each other — the former as an AAP candidate and the latter on a Congress ticket.
Although Rinku lost that election, he was inducted into the AAP in April, just ahead of the Jalandhar parliamentary bypolls. The death of sitting Congress MP Santokh Chaudhary necessitated the Jalandhar bypolls.
The AAP, during the Jalandhar bypolls, claimed the two leaders had “buried the hatchet”, but their supporters clashed violently on the day Rinku filed his nomination papers. He went on to win the election with a margin of 58,691 votes.
An hour before he joined the BJP, Angural wrote a post on his Facebook page, saying he was resigning from all responsibilities given to him by the AAP.
Angural is considered close to Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Bhagwant Mann.
Taking a dig at his joining the BJP, SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia wrote on X that Angural was among those who had complained that the BJP was trying to buy AAP MLAs to make the Mann government fall. “Please tell Punjabis how much you have been bought for… Was the money given to you more than Rs 25 crore? The truth of the AAP leaders is before everyone…” wrote Majithia.
Other leaders also took to X, criticising the CM for mocking other parties for losing their leaders to the BJP, when the party is also poaching AAP leaders.
Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira reminded the CM in an X post that in the budget session that ended earlier this month, Mann often referred to him as a “titli” (butterfly) for shifting parties. He claimed Rinku and Angural joining the BJP showed that the AAP elected representatives have lost faith in his and Arvind Kejriwal’s leadership.
Dear @BhagwantMann who are Titli’s now? You tried to make fun of your opponents like me not realizing that one sitting Mp of @AamAadmiParty Sushil Rinku & one sitting Mla Angural will become Titli’s ! Their defection shows your elected representatives have lost complete faith in… pic.twitter.com/3s4foY8hcd
— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) March 27, 2024
AAP’s Punjab spokesperson Malwinder Singh Kang told PTI that Rinku has behaved like a traitor. “We picked him up to contest the parliamentary elections even when he had lost the assembly elections. Both CM Bhagwant Mann and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal campaigned in his favour (during the Jalandhar bypolls),” he said.
“Now, when the BJP has stooped to arresting Kejriwal in a false case, Rinku has joined the BJP. What bigger example of a traitor can be given?” he added, referring to Kejriwal’s arrest for alleged money laundering in the 2021-22 Delhi excise policy case.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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