With rumours rife, Warring meets party workers in Sushil Rinku's constituency

Deepkamal Kaur

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Jalandhar, February 20

Amid reports that Jalandhar West ex-MLA Sushil Rinku is set to hop to another party, PPCC chief Amarinder SIngh Raja Warring on Monday chose to hold the first meeting of party workers and supporters ahead of Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll in his constituency.

Warring held a meeting late this evening in Rinku’s office which was attended by around 400 workers. Rinku, who had been a claimant for Lok Sabha seat from the Congress in 2019 and lost the Assembly poll in 2022, was completely in disarray. AAP MLA Sheetal Angural, who had been his rival from the area, got all his confidants including Deputy Mayor Harsimranjit Banti, inducted into the AAP.

Rinku, who is from the coterie of ex-Jalandhar MP and now Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh, has always been very confident earlier but had been lying low in the recent past. He had least hoped that he would lose to Angural, who could not even win a councillor’s election against him. Of late, there had been reports that he had met AAP national general secretary (organisation) Sandeep Pathak with the hope that he could be roped in as a prospective candidate for AAP but Angural is learnt to have spoiled his plans.

Other than Rana Gurjeet Singh, Rinku also enjoys the support of Shahkot MLA Hardev S Laddi Sherowalia and Jalandhar Lok Sabha in-charge Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal.

About the Congress going weak under Rinku, Banti (who had been one of his closest aides in the past), said, “We were 19 councillors who got elected on a Congress ticket from Jalandhar West area in 2018. Of the total, only a few are left in the party including Rinku’s wife Sunita Rinku, Tarsem Lakhotra and Jagdish Samrai. The rest have all deserted the MLA one after the other as they did not like his attitude.”

Even on Monday, several leaders from Jalandhar West including Seth Satpal Mal, Manish Aggarwal and Dr Shiv Dyal Malli, who joined the BJP in the presence of Union Minister Gajendra Shekhawat, have all been Congress leaders.

On Tuesday, Warring is slated to hold meetings in Adampur constituency along with MLA Sukhwinder Kotli.