Justice Zora yet to campaign

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 30

Pitted from a weak terrain of the party, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate from the Jalandhar LS seat Justice Zora Singh (retd) has still not arrived here to start his campaign even six days since his name got announced.

Declared as the candidate on Sunday, he was scheduled to kick off his campaign on Wednesday but he has not arrived so far, giving rise to all kinds of speculations. Since there is hardly any cadre left in the party after seven of its nine MLA candidates have left AAP, the candidate is said to be worried on how he will run his campaign and organise events.

Jalandhar, aweak terrain for AAP

Justice Zora Singh is facing a Herculean task to raise the cadre from scratch again. The old cadre has become so disillusioned since the party’s debacle in 2017 poll in Jalandhar that they are no longer interested in returning to the party fold. The party had finished third on eight of the nine seats. There has been hardly any activity of the party since the past two years.

The leaders from the rival party have started taking jibes at the AAP leadership saying that perhaps their candidate is not interested or is so scared that he does not even want to step into the battlefield sensing a defeat already. Punjab Ekta Party leader Sukhpal Khaira has said: “AAP is in name only, especially in Jalandhar. The party does not have any base here. Who will he arrange any meeting with?”

Being an outsider, he also does not have many contacts of his own. Justice Zora Singh, who hails from Mohali, had earlier announced that he would be here on Wednesday. Ever since, he has been postponing his visit by a day or two. Now, his son Harmanjit Singh says: “We will be coming to Jalandhar tomorrow evening.”

AAP Doaba zone president Sanjiv Sharma maintained that the campaign in Jalandhar had got late by a week. “I was not available here to receive the candidate and engage him with party workers. I told him to come by weekend when we can arrange for a good meeting to start with.”

With both Opposition parties – Shiromani Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party – having roped in candidates for the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat from outside, the Congress cadre here is quite upbeat.

Both Charanjit Singh Atwal of SAD and Justice Zora Singh (retd) of AAP had earlier been trying to get ticket from the reserved Fatehgarh Sahib seat but have somehow landed in Jalandhar. Atwal hails from Ludhiana.