Doaba Cong stronghold, party has edge in Chabbewal bypoll: Bajwa

Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly Pratap Singh Bajwa today urged the Congress leadership in the district to gear up and work together for the Chabbewal by-election. According to sources, in an over two hour long meeting at district Congress president Arun Dogra’s residence with senior party leaders of the district, he discussed at length the reasons which led to the defeat of Congress candidate from Hoshiarpur during the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year and directed the party leaders not to repeat the mistakes.

According to sources present in the meeting, Bajwa said that former minister Sunder Sham Arora and Rana Gurjit will be the overall in-charge for the Chabbewal by-election and all ex-MLAs will be heading the campaigning in five villages each while the district-level office-bearers of the party have been assigned two villages each.

Bajwa was of the view that the Congress has a stronghold in Doaba and also therefore an edge in the bypoll. He asked party candidate Ranjit Kumar to conduct village-to-village and door-to-door campaigning, contacting people directly. He told Congressman that they should work unitedly to ensure the victory of party candidate in the bypoll.

Former minister Sunder Sham Arora, MLA Indu Bala, Pawan Aadia, former Lok Sabha candidate Yamini Gomar, former Vidhan Sabha candidate from Garhshankar Amarpreet Singh Lally, INTUC leader Ashwani Sharma, district Congress vice-president Rajneesh Tandon, former Market Committe chairman Rajesh Gupta, former DCC president Kuldeep Nanda, DCC vice-president Vishwanath Bunty, Amarpal Kaka, Davinder Singh Jattpuri and others were present on the occasion.