Party hopper Rinku is BJP candidate from Jalandhar

Jalandhar, March 30

As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its first list of six candidates for Punjab, it chose to name its newly roped in leader and sitting Lok Sabha MP Sushil Rinku (48) from the Jalandhar (reserved) seat.

Rinku has been MP from Jalandhar for the past 10 months, but he then represented the Aam Aadmi Party. He joined the BJP just three days ago. Rinku had trounced Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary, wife of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary, whose demise had necessitated bypoll in 2023. He defeated her with 58,691 votes.

Rinku had started his career as MC councillor in Jalandhar on the Congress ticket. He or his wife Sunita Rinku remained councillors for four consecutive terms. In 2017, he got elected as the Congress MLA from the Jalandhar West seat, but had lost to AAP in 2022. He made a comeback last year by joining AAP and winning the Parliamentary seat. This is the third party from where he would be trying his luck. The moot question that everyone is asking is whether Jalandhar will trust him with the third party.

Rinku today said he left AAP as the party did not fulfil any promises that it had made ahead of its elections and that he had all hopes from the saffron party that had got a stopover for Jalandhar in Vande Bharat Delhi-bound train and got flights re-launched from the Adampur airport here.

There had been speculations that he could be shifted to Hoshiarpur, but these were all settled today with Rinku’s formal announcement from Jalandhar.