Voter wary of promises
By K.G. Dutt

KARNAL: The Congress stalwart and three-time former Chief Minister of Haryana, Mr Bhajan Lal is facing rough weather in Karnal. The road to victory for him seems to be set with difficulties.

During the 1998 parliamentary poll, Mr Bhajan Lal had trounced Mr I.D. Swami of the BJP by a margin of over 50,000 votes. Once again, the former Chief Minister is locked in a straight contest with Mr I.D Swami. But much water has flown down the bridge since 1998. The present scenario does not present smooth sailing for Mr Bhajan Lal.

Mr Bhajan Lal is known for his ability to manoeuvre voter in his favour. But this time the voter in the Karnal parliamentary constituency does not seem to be prepared to be taken in by tall promises. This is indicated by the people’s indifference to Mr Bhajan Lal’s promise that he would convert Karnal into “Paris”.

There are other factors which has made Mr Bhajan Lal’s task difficult. The Brahmin votes numbering 80,000 may not go to him this time. Many are annoyed because traditionally Karnal has been a Brahmin seat.

The Brahmins feel Mr Bhajan Lal has snatched this Brahmin citadel from the community’s hands.The District Congress Committee is headed by a Brahmin, Mr Kuldip Sharma, son of veteran Congress leader Chiranji Lal Sharma. Mr Kuldip Sharma is aligned with the group led by Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

This group is against Mr Bhajan Lal because he did not allow Mr Chiranji Lal to be renominated from Karnal. The father and son have a considerable influence among the Brahmin voters.The former Chief Minister is still engaged in pacifying his supporters.

As a result, his campaign is yet to pick up.The second main segment of voters are the Jats and Sikhs who account for over 2.30 lakh votes in the constituency. So far the Sikhs and the Jats are keeping away from Mr Bhajan Lal’s campaign. These communities have never favoured Mr Bhajan Lal. A section of Sikh voters has already decided to support the BJP candidate, Mr I.D. Swami.

A resolution to this effect was passed at a dera at Qualandry Gate.Although Mr Bhajan Lal has enlisted the services of Sikh politicians like the former Speaker of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha, Mr Tara Singh, but his popularity seems to be confined to a small section of Sikhs.Although some known Jat leaders of Karnal are helping Mr Bhajan Lal, yet the Jats cannot be taken for granted. The INLD-BJP poll pact is likely to have its impact on the Jat voters.

The Congress candidate had polled a majority of Rajput and Ror votes during the 1998 elections. But they too seem to have their reservations on the Congress candidate this time.The only saving grace for Mr Bhajan Lal seems to be the BC voters. He has enlisted the services of Mr Umedh Singh, husband of former dacoit queen Phoolan Devi.

Mr Umedh Singh, who had fought on the Lok Dal ticket during the 1998 elections from Karnal, had polled about 1.54 lakh votes.The BSP has put up Mr Pradeep Chaudhary, its state General Secretary, from Karnal. The BSP has influence on voters in Indri and Gharaunda areas. Mr Chaudhary also claims that he will make inroads into the Jat vote bank as he is the grandson of the Jat supremo, Mr Devi Lal.

In any case, he is likely to undermine the chances of Mr Bhajan Lal. Mr Umedh Singh can only prevail upon Kashyap voters to vote for the Congress candidate.The BJP candidate has a distinct advantage over Mr Bhajan Lal as he had started his campaign over three months back.

Mr Swami has kept contact with his voters and toured all villages in the constituency. The main drawback for Mr Swami could be infighting among the local BJP and RSS workers.The support of Mr Shashi Pal Mehta, former industries minister, to Mr Swami may prove to be his bane than benefit.

KLF men admit abductions
Tribune News Service and UNI

JALANDHAR, Aug 21 — The Jalandhar Police, which arrested three Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) terrorists said the arrested had organised sensational kidnappings of Romanian diplomat Radu, senior Congress leader’s son Rajinder Mirdha, Mr Rahul of the Khaitan group and industrialist Mukesh Jain of Delhi in the past.

With the arrest of three members of the KLF’s operational group, the police today claimed to have worked out yet another sansational kidnapping of a teenaged son of an affluent Punjab resident early this month.

Stating this here SSP Gaurav Yadav said interrogation of three KLF terrorists, including a murder convict, arrested by the police on Thursday revealed that they were the prime suspects in the kidnapping of 19-year-old Deepak Monga, alias Laddo, from Bathinda on August 5.

Deepak was abducted along with his Maruti Zen car at gunpoint by Jagtar Singh Raju, Ram Singh Ramu and Jasbir Singh Jassa when he was driving home from Bathinda to Kotkapura town where his affluent father Desa Singh Monga owns a petrol pump.

The car in which the terrorists were found transporting a huge cache of arsenal from Jammu to Punjab also turned out to be the one which was snatched from Deepak. A mobile phone recovered from the accused also belonged to Deepak, the SSP added.

The police officer said Deepak was released after a week in captivity at various locations in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

The SSP said yet another person, code-named Shekhar, had turned out to be the fulcrum between the foreign-based terrorist controllers and Punjab-based operational group of terrorists possibly based in Punjab’s industrial city of Ludhiana.

Shekhar had been maintaining telephonic contact with Sandip and Harmesh on the one hand and Raju, Jassa and Ramu and a few others on the other hand. The police officer said it was Shekhar who was to provide the Punjab operational group with funds, arrange hideouts for them and the arsenal seized from them and to facilitate target selection for subversion and killings.

The arsenal which was seized from the operational group comprised of four and half kilos of RDX, three rocket launchers, two sniper rifles, one assault rifle of AK-56 type with two magazines and 50 bullets, one tommygun, eight pencil bombs, two revolvers of .32 MM calibre with 15 bullets, 20 electrical and 100 mechanical detonators besides the Maruti Zen and mobile phone of abducted Deepak.

The KLF had developed high degree of expertise by organising the kidnappings of Radu in September, 1991, Mukesh Jain in March, 1993, Rahul in April, 1994 for which they extorted a ransom of Rs 3.2 crore, and of Rajinder Mirdha at Jaipur in February, 1995. The outfit resorted to abduction of Deepak to set up their network in Punjab, he added.

The SSP said the police had also established the identity of four more members of the operation group and they were Gurdas Singh, formerly of KCF (Zaffarwal), who joined the ranks of KLF after his release from the Nabha jail, Jasbir Singh, Dalip Singh and Daljit Singh Happy, all resident of Faridkot district.