Kartarpur ex-Congress MLA Surinder Singh Chaudhary joins AAP

Jalandhar, April 10

In a setback to the Congress, Surinder Singh Chaudhary, who was the MLA of the Congress from Kartarpur in 2017, today joined AAP.

He is the son of ex-minister Chaudhary Jagjit Singh and nephew of Jalandhar MP late Santokh Singh Chaudhary (whose wife Karamjit Kaur is the Congress nominee for the bypoll). It has come as a major dent for the party as well as the family which had been riding the sympathy wave.

The Chaudhary family had been maintaining that they were carrying a legacy of remaining aligned with the Congress for the past 97 years since the era of ex-minister Master Gurbanta Singh and had shown complete loyalty.

The AAP’s move has spoilt the narrative of the candidate too. Surinder Chaudhary had contested the Kartarpur Assembly election even in 2022 and had lost to AAP’s Balkar Singh.

With two of the nine halqa in-charges of the Congress having already drifted the AAP way, the campaign of the Congress has faced a severe dent right at the start. Some councillors from the Jalandhar West area, who were associated with Rinku, too joined AAP even as the Congress had been trying its best to keep the flock together.

But Congress leaders maintain that they still have one month to make up for the loss. Congress state in-charge Harish Chaudhary said, “When the ruling party knows it has no public support, it is trying all these tactics to align people from other parties to show its strength. Their own MLAs have not been able to perform.”