Am a nationalist, not a sectarian, says BJP’s SS Ahluwalia

Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
Durgapur, April 27

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SS Ahluwalia, the BJP candidate from Burdwan-Durgapur constituency of West Bengal says if Madhu Limaye, a Maharashtrian, can win elections from Munger and George Fernandes, a native of coastal Karnataka, from Muzaffarpur, why not a Sikh with his roots in West Punjab from Bengal.

“I am a nationalist, not a sectarian. I want to contest from a constituency where there is not even a single Sikh voter,” Ahluwalia, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, says.

Ahluwalia, a Sikh with his family roots in Sialkot, has chosen for himself a constituency that is near his “home”.  Durgapur is 40 km from Asansol where Ahluwalia (68) was born. He speaks Bengali fluently and is married to a Bengali woman.

“My entire education–right from nursery to the university level–took place in Burdwan district. I must repay the debt of the land by ensuring overall development of the region,” Ahluwalia, who considers himself “more of a Bengali than a Punjabi”, says.

He strictly adheres to Sikhism in personal life and proudly cites his son young Raunak’s flowing untrimmed beard. “I don’t think you will see Badal’s or Dhindsa’s sons sporting such beards,” he says.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) supporters do not deny Ahluwalia’s association with the region and his status as a “son-in-law”.

Ahluwalia’s brother-in-law Tapas Banerjee is TMC MLA from Asansol Dakshin constituency.

But citing how Ahluwalia abandoned Darjeeling, TMC supporters say he cannot be relied upon.

Ahluwalia, who has had four terms in the Rajya Sabha (two each from Bihar and Jharkhand) and was also a minister in the PV Narasimha Rao-led Congress government, got into the Lok Sabha for the first time after he won the Darjeeling seat on a BJP ticket in 2014. His absence during the 2017 agitation for Gorkhaland made Ahluwalia unpopular among the Gorkhas forcing him to change his constituency.

Ahluwalia explains the absence saying he did not want to join the movement for a separate state since it would have created problems for the BJP elsewhere in West Bengal.

Ahluwalia’s name was announced as a candidate from Burdwan-Durgapur only two days before the expiry of the last date for filing nominations for the seat. Since then Ahluwalia has been campaigning relentlessly and has emerged as the main challenger to TMC candidate and sitting MP Mamtaz Sanghamita (73), a gynaecologist.

Congress’s Ranajit Mukherjee, secretary of the party’s research department, and CPI(M) nominee Abhas Ray Chaudhuri, a member of the party’s central committee, are both lagging behind in the contest polling for which will take place on April 29.