4 Rajya Sabha members have Jalandhar connect

Jalandhar, June 5

After the completion of the process of the Rajya Sabha elections on Friday, Jalandhar has got the highest ever representation in the Upper House of Parliament.

While Lovely Professional University chancellor Ashok Mittal and cricketer Harbhajan Singh were picked for RS membership by the Aam Aadmi Party last month, environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal officially became the new RS member on Saturday. The fourth one is Ranjeet Ranjan, who is a Congress nominee from Chhattisgarh, but has her roots in Jalandhar.

With a fairly good representation from the area, the residents are hopeful of getting a good amount of grants from the discretionary funds allocated to the MPs. There have been several MPs from Jalandhar in the recent past, including Naresh Gujral, Kartar Singh Duggal, Barjinder Singh Hamdard, Iqbal Singh, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jagjit Singh Anand, but their tenures remained staggered.

DCC Jalandhar chief Balraj Thakur said, “People from Jalandhar have high hopes from the new RS members. From among the lot from Jalandhar, Mittal is an educationist and businessman, Bhajji is a cricketer and the likely new member, Seechewal, is an environmentalist. All three spheres need a lot of improvement and the new RS members are expected to bring about a good positive change.”

Manoj Arora, a veteran political leader, said: “Jalandharites surely have high expectations from the new RS members. If not four, we can easily count on three RS members from Jalandhar, which is a fairly good number. Ranjeet Ranjan originally hailed from Jalandhar and her sister is putting up at Avtar Nagar here. She is a frequent visitor to the city and is fully updated about local politics, but she has got nomination from Chhattisgarh and first preference will surely be MP and UP.”