Amrinder Singh Raja Warring’s entry heats up contest in Ludhiana

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, May 9

The unexpected entry of Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring has turned Ludhiana into a hot seat and also made the contest interesting.

The three-time MLA from Gidderbaha and former Transport Minister, Warring has come here all the way from his home constituency Bathinda to what he says, “To confront a turncoat”.

Once party colleagues and friends, Warring and sitting three-time MP Ravneet Bittu have turned foes, with the latter calling the Congress candidate, who is also former president of the Indian Youth Congress, an “outsider”, who, he says, has been “tricked by sharks in the Congress to end his clout in the party”.

Bittu had quit the Congress to join the BJP, which has fielded him again from Ludhiana, which the grandson of slain Chief Minister Beant Singh has been representing since 2014. Earlier, he had won his maiden parliamentary election from Anandpur Sahib in 2009 to become the youngest MP from Punjab at the age of 33.

Besides Bittu and Warring, AAP has nominated its sitting first-time MLA from Ludhiana Central Ashok Parashar Pappi while SAD has fielded its former one-time MLA from Ludhiana East Ranjit Singh Dhillon from here. While Pappi, who had demolished the Congress citadel Ludhiana Central by defeating then three-time Congress MLA Surinder Kumar Dawar in the 2022 Assembly poll, is banking on his own and the party’s performance, Dhillon, who had remained SAD’s district president and had become MLA from Ludhiana East in 2012 but lost the last two consecutive Assembly elections in 2017 and 2022, is claiming that he has been in touch with the masses since long and being a local, he feels that he has an “edge over others”.

Having over 17.54-lakh voters spread across nine Assembly segments in the state’s biggest and largest district, in terms of area and population, Ludhiana constituency has been the stronghold of the Congress and SAD, which had won the seat for six and five times, respectively.

Of the total 12 Lok Sabha elections held here since 1977, the Simranjit Singh Mann-led SAD (Amritsar) had also represented Ludhiana once in 1989.

While AAP had contested this seat once in 2014, finishing runner-up, the BJP had supported SAD under its previous alliance for nine times and had fought Ludhiana independently twice in 1996 and 1992 when it had ended third and second, respectively. Intensifying their electioneering, the candidates in the fray have pulled all stops to woo voters.

The main political parties are focusing more on the urban vote bank, which is estimated at over 70 per cent, while Scheduled Caste electorates are also having an estimated ratio of over 23 per cent as per the 2011 Census data.

Being the industrial and business capital of the state, Ludhiana’s major issues revolve around trade and industry, which laments that no successive governments either at the Centre or in the state had ever paid heed to their demands. The lack of basic civic amenities, poor road and street infrastructure, especially inside the city, traffic bottlenecks, parking pangs, rising pollution levels, sewerage and cleanliness are among the perennial problems being raised by residents.

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