Uphill journey likely for Baldev Khaira in four-cornered contest

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service 

Jalandhar, January 15

Locked in a four-cornered contest from the reserved Phillaur seat, it will not be a smooth sailing for Akali candidate Baldev Khaira.

Even after having had seven months in the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) after quitting the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and managing to give doles during this period, including bicycles to girls, tubewell connections to farmers, 10,000 blue cards to the under-privileged and distributing grants worth Rs 35 crore for development works in 140 villages falling in the constituency, Khaira has had to struggle a lot.

His biggest worry came when the BSP fielded Avtar Singh Karimpuri from the seat in September last, simultaneously relieving him of his duty as the state president. The agenda behind the move was to keep the BSP votebank of the party intact and not let it go the Khaira way, in which the party has reportedly somewhat succeeded.

But Khaira differs on this as he points out, “No, there has been a complete drift in the BSP cadre with me. Former BSP Jalandhar district presidents Balbir Tehang and Madan Lal Randhawa are with me. So are other party leaders, including Vinod Kumar and Dev Raj Sandhu. Moreover, everyone knows that Karimpuri is an outsider. His constituency has been Mahilpur.”

With Khaira coming in, even SAD MLA Avinash Chander and former MLA from the seat Sarwan Singh Phillaur have come against him completely and are reportedly working hard behind the scene to trounce him. Vikramjit Chaudhary, son of Jalandhar MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh, of the Congress and Saroop Singh Kadiana, candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party are also aspirants from the seat. If Khaira passed on doles as SAD halqa inc harge, Vikramjit did the same with MPLADS funds on behalf of his father.

The Akali candidate is also banking on his inter-caste marriage which worked even as he came third in the 2012 Assembly polls as BSP candidate from the seat. His wife Bhawna Khosla hails from a general caste family and his in-laws have been campaigning hard for him all over again. “They have an agency of Asian Paints in Phillaur. They have a wide social circle,” he talked about his in-laws adding, “They are even taking care of my two children aged one and five as I and my wife are busy in the campaign.”

Even during his campaigns, the young Dalit leader harps on ‘Sarv Samaj’ welfare. “I am for the uplift of all castes, with more focus on the underprivileged. At my distance learning centre of IK Gujral Punjab Technical University, I am giving scholarships on a personal basis to many poor students so that financial problems do not come in their way to avail education,” he said.

Even as Khaira got some fillip, with Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal holding sangat darshan in Phillaur, CM Parkash Singh Badal will be holding a rally for him on January 31.