Khattar plays Punjabi card to woo voters

Parveen Arora
Tribune News Service
Karnal, December 13

Three days ahead of the elections to the Karnal Municipal Corporation, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday played the Punjabi card to woo members of the community.

The community has nearly 52,453 voters in the city.

The CM, who so far avoided calling himself Khattar and preferring his first name, claimed himself to be Punjabi and sought support and votes from members of the community.

Khattar, after assuming office gave the slogan of ‘Haryana Ek, Haryanvi Ek’, but on Thursday referred himself as a Punjabi leader.

“I do not believe in caste system and seeking votes on the basis of the development work being done by the BJP government, but if you want to cast your votes on the basis of caste then you should cast in favour of the BJP candidate as I am also a Punjabi,” he said while interacting with members of the Punjabi community here.

BJP candidate Renu Bala Gupta belongs to the Aggarwal community, while Independent candidate Asha Wadhwa is from the Punjabi community. Asha is being supported by the INLD-BSP alliance and the Congress.

In comparison to Punjabi voters, the Aggarwal community has 21,480 votes.

Sources said fearing shift of a sizeable number of Punjabi voters to Asha, a meeting was organised to pacify the Punjabi community members who were annoyed for being neglected by their own community leader Khattar.

During his day-long visit, the CM addressed four public meetings in various wards. He assured the general public that he was not far away from the people of Karnal. He even tried to impress upon them by saying that they should be proud of that their representative who was taking care of the whole state.

“We have reduced corruption and brought transparency in functioning of the government. We have regularised more than 900 unauthorised colonies including 38 in Karnal. The work on the expansion of Karnal Aviation Club will start after availability of land. We have initiated several projects, including western and extern bypasses, in the city,” said the CM.

Khattar said that there was no anti-incumbency factor across the country and even in Karnal. “We will win all five mayoral seats,” he said.