In Congress stronghold Amritsar, BJP may find the going tough again

GS Paul

Amritsar, March 20

Former Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who has joined the BJP, is being seen as a potential candidate from Amritsar for the Lok Sabha elections.

However, it may not be a cakewalk for him, if the past political trend of Amritsar is anything to go by.

Between 1952-2019, 20 Lok Sabha polls and bypolls were conducted, of which the Congress won 13 times, the Opposition, including Bhartiya Jansangh, Janata Party, six times and Independent once.

Having been represented by Indian National Congress candidates Gurmukh Singh Musafir from 1952-1962 and then RL Bhatia from 1972-2004, the Amritsar Lok Sabha had traditionally remained a Congress bastion until the cricketer-turned politician Navjot Sidhu jumped into the fray as a BJP candidate. From 2004, the seat remained with Sidhu till 2014. He vacated it for former Union Minister Arun Jaitley.

Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the political dynamics of this seat shifted again towards the Congress when Jaitley was defeated by former CM Capt Amarinder Singh with a convincing margin of around 1 lakh votes. This was followed by the bypoll after Amarinder resigned and his close associate Gurjeet Singh Aujla was fielded. He won the bypoll in 2017 with a margin of around 2 lakh.

Union minister and former bureaucrat Hardeep Puri was another popular face of the BJP, who had witnessed election debacle in 2019 against Aujla. MP Aujla is the front runner from the Congress.

Puri was tagged as outsider in last election, Sandhu has his roots in the region. He hailed from Rai Burj Ka village in Tarn Taran district.

A 1988-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer is the grandson of former Congress leader Teja Singh Samundri, who played a pivotal role in the Gurdwara Reform Movement and Civil Disobedience Movement during the British era. He was the SGPC’s founder member and in recognition of his services to the Panth, the SGPC had named its headquarters as Teja Singh Samundri Hall.

Sandhu’s father Bishan Singh Samundri was a renowned educationist and the founding Vice-Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. His mother Jagjit Kaur Sandhu completed her doctorate in the US and returned to serve as the principal of Government College for Women, Amritsar.

Now, Sandhu is all set to start his political innings under the banner of the BJP. He shifted to his Green Avenue house in Amritsar and looked after his ancestral land at Khankot, Amritsar.

He was often seen interacting with farmers, students and professionals, entrepreneurs and the trading community to gauge their nerve and apprising about his vision for Amritsar economic and income growth potential, better opportunities and living environment for residents.