Race for Congress ticket for Patiala hots up
Manish Sirhindi | TNN | Updated: Feb 8, 2019, 10:41 IST
K K Malhotra hands over Preneet Kaur’s application for Patiala ticket PATIALA: The race for the ticket to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Patiala constituency heated up on Thursday with chief minister Amarinder Singh’s wife and former junior foreign minister Preneet Kaur and Amloh MLA Kaka Randeep Singh both formally applying for the party ticket on Thursday.
Kaur has already been in the preparation mode to contest from the Patiala seat, which she has represented consecutively in 1999, 2004 and then again in 2009. In 1999, she had defeated Surjit Singh Rakhra of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), in 2004 she defeated Capt Kanwaljit Singh and in 2009 Prem Singh Chandumajra, all three considered to be Akali heavyweights.
She was the minister of state for external affairs during the last Congress government at the Centre. During her two stints (from 1999 till 2009) in the Lok Sabha, she served in various parliamentary committees including food, civil supplies and public distribution, women’s empowerment, public undertakings and water resources.
In the general elections of 2014, she lost the Patiala seat to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Dharamvira Gandhi by a margin of 20,942 votes.
According to the party insiders, she has already started her election preparations as she has become more visible at public events across the Patiala constituency. Even chief minister Amarinder is keen on her candidature to contest the polls as he recently held a meeting with the seven Congress MLAs from Patiala constituency and senior party leaders to assess the ground situation and improve the winning prospects of his wife.
However, Kaka Randeep Singh who is also known as Randeep Singh Nabha also comes from a family of Congressmen and has laid claim on the ticket citing party policy of ‘one ticket to one family’ that had been adopted during the last assembly elections to strike a balance amongst the party leaders.
Randeep is a four-time MLA. He has won twice from Nabha and twice from Amloh on the Congress ticket. He belongs to the Nabha family, which became affiliated to the Congress in 1954. His grandfather Sivadev Singh was the Prime Minister of erstwhile Nabha estate in 1952 and in 1954 he became the education minister. His father Gurdarshan Singh Nabha became MLA on Congresss ticket six times and even served as cabinet minister. His mother Satinder Kaur Nabha was the first president of state unit of the Mahila Congress.
Party insider said that both the leaders do not share a cordial past and all effort to bury the difference have not yielded any last results. During the 2014 elections, both Capt Amarinder and Preneet had tried to bury the hatchet with the MLA following the intervention of the then in charge of party affairs in Punjab Shakeel Ahmed. After that, the Amloh MLA had even campaigned for her. However, the situation returned to zero after that.
It was learnt that differences between the Patiala royals and Nabha had cropped up again after the 2017 win of the Congress in the state assembly. While Nabha was hopeful of finding a ministerial berth given his long association with the Congress, but his name had not been considered for the same.
Kaur has already been in the preparation mode to contest from the Patiala seat, which she has represented consecutively in 1999, 2004 and then again in 2009. In 1999, she had defeated Surjit Singh Rakhra of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), in 2004 she defeated Capt Kanwaljit Singh and in 2009 Prem Singh Chandumajra, all three considered to be Akali heavyweights.
She was the minister of state for external affairs during the last Congress government at the Centre. During her two stints (from 1999 till 2009) in the Lok Sabha, she served in various parliamentary committees including food, civil supplies and public distribution, women’s empowerment, public undertakings and water resources.
In the general elections of 2014, she lost the Patiala seat to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Dharamvira Gandhi by a margin of 20,942 votes.
According to the party insiders, she has already started her election preparations as she has become more visible at public events across the Patiala constituency. Even chief minister Amarinder is keen on her candidature to contest the polls as he recently held a meeting with the seven Congress MLAs from Patiala constituency and senior party leaders to assess the ground situation and improve the winning prospects of his wife.
However, Kaka Randeep Singh who is also known as Randeep Singh Nabha also comes from a family of Congressmen and has laid claim on the ticket citing party policy of ‘one ticket to one family’ that had been adopted during the last assembly elections to strike a balance amongst the party leaders.
Randeep is a four-time MLA. He has won twice from Nabha and twice from Amloh on the Congress ticket. He belongs to the Nabha family, which became affiliated to the Congress in 1954. His grandfather Sivadev Singh was the Prime Minister of erstwhile Nabha estate in 1952 and in 1954 he became the education minister. His father Gurdarshan Singh Nabha became MLA on Congresss ticket six times and even served as cabinet minister. His mother Satinder Kaur Nabha was the first president of state unit of the Mahila Congress.
Party insider said that both the leaders do not share a cordial past and all effort to bury the difference have not yielded any last results. During the 2014 elections, both Capt Amarinder and Preneet had tried to bury the hatchet with the MLA following the intervention of the then in charge of party affairs in Punjab Shakeel Ahmed. After that, the Amloh MLA had even campaigned for her. However, the situation returned to zero after that.
It was learnt that differences between the Patiala royals and Nabha had cropped up again after the 2017 win of the Congress in the state assembly. While Nabha was hopeful of finding a ministerial berth given his long association with the Congress, but his name had not been considered for the same.
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