Kurukshetra/Ambala/Delhi: Gurpreet Kaur is the talk of the town in Haryana’s Pehowa. A doctor by profession, Kaur became Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s wife Thursday. She is believed to be in her late twenties-early thirties.
Mann had been married before, but it ended in divorce in 2015. He has two children, from his previous marriage, who now live with their mother in the US.
The Punjab CM’s wedding to Kaur came as a surprise not just for many of Mann’s colleagues in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), but also those who have known Kaur’s family for years, according to party sources and people who claim to know the bride’s family.
Still, Kaur’s neighbours in Pehowa — a small town in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district — who got to know of the wedding from the news, were celebrating the event. Everyone had a good word, or two to add about Gopi — the name Kaur is known by her neighbours.
In many parts of the town, people were seen watching news coverage of the wedding.
Staff members at Maharishi Markandeshwar Medical College at Mullana, in Haryana’s Ambala district — from where Kaur completed her MBBS degree in 2019, according to a National Medical Commission document, a copy of which was seen by ThePrint — were also glued to television sets and social media platforms on their mobiles, when ThePrint visited Thursday.
Many were having trouble recalling Kaur, but that did not them from enthusiastically following the news of the wedding.
Ashwani Sood, medical superintendent of the college, told ThePrint, “I saw the name of our college in the news and that is how we got to know that she is from here. We have so many students in one batch, it is difficult to remember each one. I do not have any recollection of her.”
According to AAP sources, Mann and Kaur have known each other at least since 2019. Several party functionaries in Punjab said that their families have known each other for a while.
But the relationship was carefully kept under the wraps, said a senior party leader, adding: “That is why several MLAs and ministers were surprised when they learnt about the marriage on Wednesday.”
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Neighbour calls Gurpreet ‘hardworking, diligent’
While Kaur’s father, Inderjit Singh, is a farmer who owns more than 40 acres of land in Kurukshetra’s Madanpur village — where Kaur is said to have spent some of her childhood years — her mother, Raj Kaur is a homemaker, said an AAP functionary.
She two elder sisters, who are currently based in the USA and Australia.
According to the senior AAP leader quoted above, Kaur and her parents have been mostly living in Mohali in the past year.
In Pehowa, Anju (she only goes by her first name), a neighbour who stays in the house opposite to that owned by Kaur’s family, told ThePrint that she could not believe it at first when she learnt of her wedding to the Punjab CM from news channels.
“We had no clue that Gopi was getting married to the (Punjab) CM. In fact, her mother is very close to me. They come to our house all the time. We had even gone for the weddings of their other two daughters, who are now settled abroad. But she did not tell us about this,” said Anju.
She added: “She (Kaur’s mother) never even mentioned that their family knows Bhagwant Maan’s family. We have been following the news on TV and also tried to call her father, but his phone is switched off,” she said.
Excited about the neighbourhood girl marrying the Punjab CM, however, Anju said women in the area distributed ladoos Thursday, to celebrate.
“We were all so happy that we distributed ladoos in the colony. After all, it was our daughter’s wedding. She is an extremely hardworking and diligent girl, we wish her all the very best,” Anju told ThePrint.
Kaur’s neighbour added that while she had noticed things being shifted out of Kaur’s house in the past few days, she hadn’t thought much about it then.
“They are constructing a house in Chandigarh, so I thought that they are slowly shifting some things to the new place. I had thought I would ask, but did not get a chance. Gopi’s parents used to travel often to the USA and Australia, where their daughters are settled,” she said.
Eager to convey her best wishes to Kaur’s family, Anju added: “I wish they return to this house in a few days and we can celebrate together… I am waiting for their phone to be switched off again so that I can talk to them and convey my wishes.”
Another neighbour, Leena Setia, too said that even though she had met Kaur’s mother, Raj Kaur, a few days ago, she had not mentioned anything about the wedding. “Maybe they had their compulsions, but she never mentioned it. Although the family is very reserved, we all are very close,” said Sethia.
‘Spotted at many of Mann’s events in past 3 years’
In AAP, nobody seemed to have a clear answer yet to how Mann and Kaur met. While some senior party leaders say that the two met in Delhi, others claim that they met during an event in Punjab.
AAP’s chief spokesperson for Punjab, Malvinder Kang, maintained that it was an “arranged marriage”.
A Sangrur-based leader of the AAP, who did not wish to be identified, told ThePrint: “She (Kaur) was spotted in several prominent events attended by Mann, both in Punjab and in Delhi, in the past three years. She was also present at Punjab’s Khatkar Kalan village with his (Mann’s) family during his swearing in ceremony (as Punjab CM) on 16 March. But none of us had a clear idea of who exactly she was until now.”
As news of Thursday’s wedding started doing the rounds Wednesday, a Twitter account by the name of Dr Gurpreet Kaur was reportedly spotted responding to congratulatory messages. By Thursday afternoon, however, the account had been deleted. Senior AAP leaders claimed that they were unsure about the veracity of the social media account.
Mann kept his wedding Thursday, a strictly private affair, which was attended by immediate families of both Mann and Kaur and a few of Mann’s party colleagues who are believed to be close to him.
AAP’s national convener and Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal, was among the guests — along with his wife Sunita Kejriwal and daughter Harshita — as was AAP Rajya Sabha MPs Raghav Chadha and Sanjay Singh.
While the rituals took place at a gurudwara in Chandigarh, a reception was organised at the chief minister’s residence.
Outside the wedding venue, Chadha told reporters Thursday, “We all are happy that happiness has returned to Mann saab‘s family after a long time. It was his mother’s dream to see her son getting settled again. Today, that dream is going to come true.”
This is Mann’s second marriage. His first marriage ended in 2015 when he and his former wife, Inderpreet Kaur, filed for divorce. The couple have two children — Dilshan (17) and Seerat (21). Both live with their mother in the USA.
Dilshan and Seerat had, however, come to Punjab in March and attended Mann’s swearing in ceremony.
Mann has always been quite open about his previous marriage. In March 2015, when he was a Lok Sabha MP from Sangrur, he told the press that his divorce was no more a personal matter. He has claimed publicly that at one point in life, he had to choose “Punjab over family”.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
Gurpreet Kaur’s age has been updated in the copy.
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