Rajouri Garden: Punjab''s drug issue dominates poll scene

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 31

With about 48,000 Sikh votes and another nearly 60,000 Punjabi electorate dominating the 1.64 lakh voters in the Rajouri Garden constituency, SAD-BJP candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa for whom the entire rank and file of the Akalis have descended here, is riding high on hopes to get elected for the second consecutive time.
But in AAP candidate Jarnail Singh, Sirsa has got a formidable challenger. Jarnail, too, has a following among Punjabis and Sikhs for hurling a shoe at former Home Minister P Chidambram on the issue of anti- Sikh riots.
Congress candidate Meenakshi Chandela and her family are also putting up a fight amidst the not-so-popular graph of the party in general in the state.
Sirsa, who has a huge support base among taxi and autorickshaw drivers, is banking heavily on the campaigning and management by the SAD. Punjab Revenue Minister Bikram Majithia is leading the campaign. He is going from door to door, besides addressing rallies. His sister and Union Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal has also campaigned for Sirsa.
The Akalis have made development projects initiated by Sirsa as the plank for seeking votes. But the AAP has drawn their strategy around the drug issue in Punjab. The AAP brings out and circulate its own newspaper, highlighting the party’s rallies. Pamphlets are also being distributed decrying the drug abuse in Punjab. “It is funny that the Akalis blame the Centre government for drugs problems and the Centre blames the Akalis. If both come to power in Delhi, rivers of drugs will flow here also,” Jarnail said.
Sirsa and Majithia ignore the charges, “This is just rabble rousing by the opposition. Punjab is the only state which is fighting against drugs. The Punjab police have broken drug cartels all over the country,” Sirsa said.
“We don’t know about drugs. For us, parking is the major issue and second is uninterrupted power supply. Whosoever we feel will deliver on solving the problem of parking and power will get our votes,” said Charanpal Singh, a shopkeeper in a market.
Sirsa said he had got 300 roads and streets re-carpeted, the work on four new multi-level parkings and sewerage projects have started in the constituency. For us, development and jobs are the main issues. The opposition has nothing else to hanker than to taint the Punjabis on flimsy charges. Majithia’s team won the election last time for me. The Akalis wrested the Delhi Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee from the hold of the Congress.”
The Akalis are also banking on the outsider tag on Jarnail Singh. Unlike Sirsa, he is not a resident of Rajouri Garden. This has given the Akalis a handle to claim he doesn’t know the problems of the area and will vanish after the elections like, they allege, he did after the Lok Sabha elections. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the SAD-BJP supported candidate got a lead of nearly 8,800 votes from the Assembly constituency area.
Congress candidate Meenakshi Chandela, daughter-in-law of Congress leader Dayanand Chandela is also putting in best efforts.