Sidhu’s visit triggers poster war in Batala
Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Batala, May 16
A poster war between the BJP and the Congress has erupted in the town with workers of both parties engaging in tearing down the banners of each other.
The immediate provocation was the visit of Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Saturday. Since he heads the Local Bodies Department, the Municipal Committee thought it appropriate to welcome him by pasting posters carrying the photo of the minister, MC president Naresh Mahajan and executive officer Manmohan Singh Randhawa.
What infuriated the Congress cadres was the fact that the posters had the photo of Mahajan, who is a BJP leader. The posters were immediately pulled down by Congress workers and in their place banners carrying former Congress MLA Ashwani Sekhri’s picture along with Sidhu’s surfaced all over the town.
Sidhu left the town the same evening but the war continued and even now wherever Congress workers see a poster having Mahajan’s photo, it is quickly brought down.
MC officials are tight-lipped over who paid for the posters, while the Sekhri camp too is maintaining silence. Two years ago, Mahajan had been installed president with the help of the casting vote exercised by Sekhri, who at that time was an ex officio member of the MC House by the virtue of being the sitting MLA. Sekhri and Mahajan were seen as comrade-in-arms till the visit of Sidhu inadvertently sparked off a credit war. MC officials claimed that they had been caught between a rock and a hard place in this political battle.
