Former state transport minister and Congress MLA from Gidderbaha Amarinder Singh Raja today named four faces who should have been included in Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann’s cabinet. While the Punjab cabinet has a place for 18 ministers, Bhagwant Mann has inducted ten ministers at first taking the total number to 11 including the CM himself.
Though Amarinder Singh Raja Warring said that the formation of cabinet is an internal matter of AAP, the party should have included the leaders who stood by it through thick and thin. Raja’s suggestion came on the day when 10 ministers took the oath of office. While there are eight first time MLAs in Mann’s cabinet, some giant-killers have failed to find a place.
“Though cabinet formation is an internal matter of AAP, but I feel these faces should have been in the cabinet. Mr. Aman Arora, Bibi Baljinder Kaur, Bibi Sarabjit Kaur Manuke, and Mr. Kultar Singh Sandhwan. These are the people who supported the Aam Aadmi Party in its good and bad times,” said Raja.
These leaders are important for AAP as they stood by the party at a time when almost half of the AAP Punjab MLAs defected to ruling Congress between 2017 and 2022. Arora is a former Congress leader who won from the Sunam seat in 2017 on an AAP ticket and retained the seat in 2022. Prof. Baljinder Kaur won the Talwandi Sabo seat for AAP in 2017 and retained the seat this year. Sarabjeet Kaur Manuke, the former deputy leader of the opposition, won from the Jagraon seat in 2017 and retained it this year. The same is the case with Kotkapura MLA Kultar Singh Sandhwan who win from the seat in 2017 and retained this year. These leaders are among the early supporters of AAP.
While these leaders have not been included in the AAP Punjab cabinet, several AAP MLAs who emerged as giant killers by defeating political stalwarts of rival parties also failed to find a place in Mann’s cabinet. Among these are Labh Singh Ugoke, who defeated former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi in the Bhadaur assembly segment by a margin of 37,558 votes, and Gurmeet Singh Khuddian, who beat Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patron Parkash Singh Badal in his traditional Lambi seat by over 11 thousand votes. While Ugoke once ran a mobile repair shop, Khuddian had joined the AAP after quitting the Congress last year.
Jeevanjyot Kaur (50) won from the Amritsar East seat, defeating former Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia from the Amritsar East seat. Charanjit Singh, an eye surgeon, made Channi bite the dust in his home constituency Chamkaur Sahib.
AAP candidate Ajit Pal Singh Kohli defeated two-time chief minister Amarinder Singh in Patiala Urban, while Jagdeep Kamboj trounced SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal in Jalalabad.