Chandigarh: On Thursday, barely eight hours before he was arrested by the Jalalabad Police in a 2015 drug case, Congress’s 57-year-old firebrand leader Sukhpal Khaira had tweeted about Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha having gifted a four-carat diamond wedding ring to Bollywood actor Parineeti Chopra. In his tweet, the Bholath MLA asked the AAP leader how he could afford a ring like that when in his last income tax return, he had claimed to earn only Rs 2.44 lakh per year.
“Will @raghav_chadha have the decency to clarify how he managed to gift a 4 Carat very expensive diamond ring to his newly wedded wife @ParineetiChopra (more than 10 times his declared income) while his income according to 2020-21 ITR is merely 2.44 Lacs? While she being a celebrity gifted him with a ring of lesser value? What is the truth? Punjab BADLAV wants to know,” Khaira said in a post on X.
Khaira was arrested from his Chandigarh residence Thursday morning in connection with a 2017 drugs case. Going live on his Facebook page during his arrest, Khaira said he was being targeted for raising his voice against the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government’s misrule in Punjab.
“This is not the politics of Badlav (change) of AAP, but the politics of badla (revenge) Khaira told media persons after he was presented in a court in Fazilka following his arrest. “Mann has been baying for my blood. He has quenched his thirst today,” he said, talking to media persons outside the court.
Significantly, Khaira, who was part of the AAP between 2015 until he was suspended for “anti-party activities” in 2018, has kept the heat on the ruling AAP ever since it came to power last year.
This daily volley has seemingly gone up considerably after Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann appeared to take a jibe at him earlier this month by calling him “aira, gaira, Nathu Khaira (roughly translating to ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’)”. It now appears to have gone from only issue-based criticism to include personal attacks.
“That is the only language the Aam Aadmi Party leaders seemed to understand,” a close aide of the leader told ThePrint after Khaira’s arrest.
On their part, the AAP insists it has “substantial proof” against Khaira. Addressing a press conference after the Congress MLA was arrested, AAP’s Punjab spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said a special investigating team was probing the drugs case and that Khaira’s custody was “essential”.
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Running ‘battle’ with Mann
The case that Khaira was arrested for dates back to an FIR that Fazilka Police registered on 9 March, 2015. The case was allegedly registered after authorities seized 2 kg of heroin and 24 carats of gold biscuits from a vehicle.
Punjab Police claims that the Congress MLA’s name cropped up during investigation.
The arrest comes at a time when Khaira kept up a steady stream of criticism of Punjab’s ruling Bhagwant Mann government — from Chadha’s lavish wedding, the AAP government’s alleged borrowing of Rs 50,000 crore to meet its expenditure and the silence of the party, including national convener Arvind Kejriwal’s, over the deteriorating Indo-Canadian relations.
Hours before his arrest, Khaira posted a video of the “dazzling” car cavalcade of the AAP’s top leaders on X saying that they were as much a part of India’s “VVIP” culture as anyone else.
Omg just watch the dazzling cavalcades of today’s brand of Aam Aadmi’s like @ArvindKejriwal @raghav_chadha @BhagwantMann & Co who once vowed not to take govt home car etc and vowed to end Vip culture but now not only have they broken their vows but are new Vvip’s of India!… pic.twitter.com/Jh3DuXAn2s
— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) September 27, 2023
Earlier that day Khaira had demanded action against AAP’s Khadoor Sahib MLA Manjinder Singh Lalpura for allegedly threatening the Tarn Taran Senior Superintendent of Police Gurmeet Singh Chauhan after the latter’s team arrested the MLA’s brother-in-law in an illegal mining case.
The case registered against the brother in law of @AamAadmiParty Khadur Sahib Mla Manjinder Singh for illegal mining exposes the false claims of @BhagwantMann that they’ve eradicated mining mafia and corruption in Punjab. The open threat by this Mla directly to Ssp Tarntaran thru… pic.twitter.com/2zaG6AYdWI
— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) September 27, 2023
Significantly, Khaira has, in the past, accused Mann of harbouring “pure hatred” towards him. In response to Khaira’s demand for compensation for flood victims in August, the chief minister said the Congress MLA’s only “only job” was to speak against him every morning “…his blood burns and he is himself turning black with jealousy,” he said.
But the differences between the two leaders date back to 2015 — a year when Khaira, upset with the Congress, had joined AAP. He was also among the 20 AAP MLAs that had won the 2017 assembly polls.
After advocate H.S. Phoolka gave up his position of Leader of the Opposition, AAP chose Khaira to replace him in 2018. But in 2019, he was removed from the post.
Khaira’s close aide who didn’t want to be named told ThePrint that it was part of Mann’s “systematic strategy to have every AAP leader who had the potential of becoming the chief minister of the state out of the party”.
“When Khaira was given the responsibility of the leader of opposition, Mann, who was a first-time MP, became extremely wary of him. And like it had happened with almost every promising AAP leader in Punjab from 2014 to 2019, Khaira was also removed from the AAP by Kejriwal,” he told ThePrint. “Mann wanted to make sure that the AAP had no other option left but to pick him as the party’s chief ministerial candidate and that is exactly what happened.”
There were other differences between Khaira and the party too. In July 2018, months before he was suspended from AAP, the Bholath MLA took on AAP leader and Punjab’s current Health Minister Balbir Singh — then the party joint secretary — over corruption allegations the latter had levelled against him.
He had also led a group of 12 AAP MLAs to protest Arvind Kejriwal’s apology to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Bikram Majithia in a defamation case.
In January 2019, two months after he was suspended from AAP, Khaira floated the Punjab Ekta Party with support from a handful of MLAs.
But this foray didn’t last long. In June 2021, Khaira merged his party with the Congress, with Amarinder Singh, the then chief minister who had frequently been on the receiving end of Khaira’s criticism, welcoming him into the party fold.
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There & back again — Khaira’s ‘love-hate-love’ relationship with Congress
The son of Akali stalwart Sukhjinder Singh Khaira, Sukhpal Khaira began his political career as a panchayat member in Kapurthala’s Ramgarh village in 1994. He joined the Punjab Youth Congress in 1997 and was made vice-president of the outfit the same year.
Today, he’s the national president of the Kisan Congress, the farmer wing of the party.
After completing his schooling from Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, Khaira did law from Panjab University, Chandigarh, and followed his father into politics. His father, who had been minister in two Akali governments, was considered to have close connections with Sikh hardliners.
Once in the Congress, Khaira rose through the ranks largely due to his ability to articulate issues on political platforms. In 1999, he became secretary of the Punjab Pradesh Congress.
Khaira contested his first assembly election from Bholath in Kapurthala in 1997 but lost to then Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak committee president and Akali leader Jagir Kaur. He faced her five more times, losing the seat only twice (2002 and 2012).
Khaira also made the most of the honour killing charges that Jagir Kaur faced, relentlessly pursuing the case till she was finally acquitted in 2018. It was this pursuit of Jagir Kaur that led him to become one of the most vocal critics of the SAD, gaining the position of the spokesperson of the Congress in Punjab.
He was also among the first Congress leaders to start using social media and reach out directly to his supporters. During the 10 years of Akali rule between 2007 to 2017, Khaira continued to attack them not only on party forums but through Facebook, gaining him a massive NRI following.
Once considered a close confidante of Captain Amarinder Singh, Khaira was upset when the former took over as the state head of the party in 2015. In this, he was joined by then outgoing state party chief Partap Singh Bajwa — a known Amarinder detractor.
When he joined the AAP in 2015, Khaira accused Amarinder for not having stood up for him when Akalis were registering “false cases” against him.
By the time he returned to the Congress in 2021, his grouse with Amarinder appeared to have ended. But he continued to criticise other Congress leaders, having been among a handful of Congress MLAs from Punjab’s Doaba region to start a campaign against then minister Rana Gurjit Singh over corruption allegations.
In 2022, AAP swept the state assembly election winning 92 of 117 seats, reducing the Congress to 18. Khaira was among the few Congressmen who won the election.
‘Vendetta politics’ — rivals SAD, BJP condemn arrest
Khaira has been relentless in his criticism of the AAP government since it came to power, questioning government recruitment drives, criticising government expenditure on advertisements, and lambasting the pace of investigation into the May 2022 killing of Punjabi singer and Congress leader Sidhu Moose Wala.
This July, Khaira led an all-out attack on cabinet minister Lal Chand Kataruchak over “sexual misconduct” allegations.
According to a video on Khaira’s Facebook page, three cases were registered against him after Mann became CM.
Among these is a case registered in July based on his family’s property settlement records from 51 years ago. Khaira saw the case as vendetta for having demanded action against Kataruchak.
Shame on @ArvindKejriwal & @BhagwantMann for their double standards as on one hand they are running from pillar to post for opposition unity and INDIA alliance while on the other hand they’re sparing no opportunity to marginalize @INCPunjab by slapping maliciously false criminal… pic.twitter.com/ZIUXqWIxIz
— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) July 28, 2023
In April this year, he was also booked for allegedly intimidating Bholath SDM.
But this isn’t the only time Khaira was arrested in connection with the 2015 drug case. In November 2021, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Khaira over money laundering allegations linked to the same case. Khaira then claimed that the case was a result of his support for the farmers’ protest.
Meanwhile, Khaira’s arrest has drawn condemnation not only from Congress but also rival parties SAD and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). SAD general secretary Daljit Singh Cheema said in a video message that vendetta politics in the state must end.
BJP’s Tarun Chugh also made similar comments. In a statement to PTI, Chug said: “The AAP government in Punjab, which came to power in the name of badlav (change), is misusing power and doing vindictive politics”.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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