Chandigarh: The race for the Chandigarh ticket for the forthcoming parliamentary polls is heating up with actress-turned-politician and sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Kirron Kher wanting to fight a second time and cricketer-turned-politician Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu pushing the Congress to field his wife to take Kher on.
The Congress stronghold was held by former Union minister senior party leader Pawan Kumar Bansal for three consecutive terms from 1999, before finally losing to Kher in 2014 by almost 70,000 votes.
While the party is aiming to wrest the seat back from the BJP, senior Congressmen are fighting among themselves to lay claim to the Chandigarh ticket.
Bansal, a four times MP from the city and former rail minister, is embroiled in an ugly tussle with Navjot Kaur Sidhu — wife of Navjot Singh Sidhu, Punjab cabinet minister and Congress star campaigner — who has announced that she has been promised the ticket.
Former Union minister Manish Tewari, who belongs to a prominent family of Chandigarh, has also thrown his hat in the ring.
Internal fight
Bansal was appointed rail minister in 2012 but resigned a year later after his nephew was arrested in a railway job scam.
His name for the Chandigarh ticket was considered almost final but the surprise entry of Navjot Kaur among the contenders last month has sharply divided the party in the city.
Navjot Kaur, a doctor by profession, was a BJP MLA from Amritsar (East) during the Akali Dal-BJP regime in Punjab from 2012-2017. She was also the chief parliamentary secretary for health.
She resigned from the BJP in 2016 and joined the Congress along with her husband. In the 2017 assembly elections in Punjab, Navjot Singh Sidhu contested from her seat.
Navjot Kaur has now staked claim to the Chandigarh ticket and has even begun “campaigning”. She is being supported by a section of the party leadership in the city.
Last week, her supporters were stopped from entering the Congress office in the city allegedly by Bansal’s supporters.
Two days after she submitted her application for the ticket former, Tewari also jumped into the fray.
A former MP from Ludhiana, Tewari grew up in Chandigarh leaving it only after college. His father was a professor in the Punjab University while his mother was dean of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER).
Also read: Navjot Kaur Sidhu seeks Congress ticket from Chandigarh
Congress bind
Sources in the Congress said the party is unable to choose between a senior party man who has represented the city several times but is under a cloud and an “outsider” who was with the BJP for most of her political career, with little or no connection to Chandigarh.
Tewari is being supported by Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, said the sources.
There is also a lot of pressure being exerted by Navjot Singh Sidhu for a ticket to his wife, added the sources. Sidhu is among the top national leaders chosen to campaign across the country in the forthcoming elections in the party.
Chandigarh polls
Since the first parliamentary elections held in the city in 1967, following Punjab and Haryana’s reorganisation, the one-seat city has gone to polls 13 times. Out of these, the Congress has held the seat seven times while the BJP three times.
Janata Dal, Bharatiya Jan Sangh and Bharatiya Lok Dal have won it once each.
Harmohan Dhawan, the man who had won the Chandigarh seat in 1989 as a Janata Dal candidate, is the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for the upcoming polls.
Chandigarh will vote on 19 May in the final phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
Also read: BJP man who could be Chandigarh mayor this week is a ‘bad character’