SGPC member Surjit Singh Garhi joins BJP

Tribune News Service

Ravneet Singh

Patiala, February 13

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) member Surjit Singh Garhi joined the BJP in the presence of party president JP Nadda and candidate from Rajpura Jagdish Kumar Jagga here yesterday. He was formally welcomed into the party fold during Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to Patiala city today. Garhi, who remained in the SAD since the beginning, is not the only one to have shifted sides. A number of leaders from Patiala have left their former parties just before the Assembly elections.

Surjit Singh Garhi remained the district Patiala president of Shiromani Akali Dal’s Kisan Wing for four years. Apart from being a member of the party’s political affairs committee, he also remained its Rajpura and Banur circle president for 15 years. He has been a member of the SGPC since 2004.

He said the reason for joining the BJP was SAD’s failure to offer him a ticket from Rajpura “I was the deserving candidate from Rajpura. But the party did not give me a ticket. I was being ignored,” Garhi said.

He said joining the BJP while being a member of the SGPC was no different than being in an alliance with it. “There is nothing new in it. The SAD and BJP have been in an alliance for 23 years since 1997,” he added.

Before his joining the BJP, senior and local figures from Patiala district joined different political parties in the last six months. Former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh quit the Congress in November last year and floated a new outfit—Punjab Lok Congress. Soon after, local Congress leaders, including Mayor Sanjeev Kumar Sharma, KK Malhotra and other Congress councillors joined the PLC.

Akali stalwart late Gurcharan Singh Tohra’s grandson Kanwarveer Singh also joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in January this year. His father Harmel Singh had remained minister in the SAD government.

Former SAD leader and first Mayor of Patiala, Vishnu Sharma quit the Shiromani Akali Dal in January this year and joined the Congress. He has remained in the Congress earlier as well. The Congress, soon after his joining the party announced him as its candidate for the Patiala Urban seat.

Former Patiala Shiromani Akali Dal Mayor Ajit Pal Singh Kohli also snapped ties with the SAD and joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in January. He and his family—father and former minister Surjit Singh Kohli and grandfather and former MLA Sardara Singh— had around seven decades-long association with the SAD.

A local leader and former Punjabi University faculty member Sumrinder Singh Sira had joined the AAP in January last year. He was expecting a ticket from Patiala Urban but the party announced Ajit Pal Singh Kohli as its candidate from Patiala Urban. Sira joined Capt Amarinder Singh’s PLC on Saturday.

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