Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will contest all the fourteen Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, announced AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday.

Addressing the public, Kejriwal made an appeal to the people of Punjab to cast their vote in his favour and make him win all the Lok Sabha seats. He also thanked people for blessing him with 92 out of 117 seats in the Assembly elections two years back and made his party win the state election.

With folded hands, he requested people to make him win in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. For the Lok Sabha elections, Punjab has 13 seats while Chandigarh has one.

Kejriwal added saying his party will declare its candidate for all 14 seats in the next 10 to 15 days. He requested people to make AAP sweep all these seats with the majority.

Speaking to the reporters, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann informed that the party will declare all 13 candidates from Punjab and one from Chandigarh by the end of this month.

On Kejriwal’s announcement to contest all Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa in a scathing attack, questioned the INDIA alliance and said their only purpose was to pressurise the agencies and protect the money accumulated through corruption. He said the alliance had no ideology. He also said Kejriwal would never want to share power with the Congress party.   

Meanwhile, BJP National Spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla slammed the Opposition bloc INDIA alliance for failing to unite their members and called the alliance without a mission, and vision, and only have confusion. The structure of the INDIA Alliance has been crumbling. He also criticised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and called his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra strange. He added saying Yatra is more of a “bye-bye Yatra” than a Nyay Yatra and suggested Gandhi take out the INDIA Jodo Yatra, instead of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.

The Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Saturday passed the Lift and Escalator Bill, 2024 and Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayukta (Amendment) Bill, 2024.

According to Bill, registration will be mandatory for the installation of lifts and escalators in the state.

In the Lokayukta and Up-Lokayukta Bill, a provision has been made to reduce the tenure of the anti-corruption ombudsman from eight years to five years.

Speaking on the Lift and Escalator Bill, Energy Minister Arvind Kumar Sharma cited an incident that took place in Noida, in which MLAs Dhirendra Singh and Pankaj Singh had demanded a law for lifts and escalators.

Sharma further informed that apart from a mandatory registration for installing lifts and escalators in public, the concerned person has to inform the authority immediately in case of an accident. A provision has also been made for insurance and compensation.

The Bill, which will be an Act now, seeks to get approval from the Energy Department for the installation of lifts and escalators. The Bill makes it mandatory for the agencies, that manufacture, install lifts and escalators, and maintain them, to register with the Director of Electrical Safety.

The Bill further directed that the approval must be renewed every five years and also have to be tested every year. A fee of Rs 1,500 needs to be deposited for the same.

A fine will be imposed on the concerned person If they disobey the orders and ignore to do so.

Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal and Haryana already have laws for installing lifts but there was no such law for it in UP, said Sharma while describing the Bill as the need of the hour.

The implementation of the Bill will not only curb the accident but also strengthen the system.

While speaking on the Bill, the BJP member Dhirender Singh thanked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the Energy Minister Sharma for making it possible. He said the Bill will prove to be a milestone.

Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday accused leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge and other leaders of the Congress for creating an environment in the House that is insulting to the memory of Chaudhary Charan Singh and causing distress to the farmers of India.

Dhankhar said the Congress should feel shameful for insulting Chaudhary Charan Singh’s legacy. He said the Congress leaders are hurting every farmer in India by creating such an environment in the House on the issue of Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Dhankhar warned the Congress leaders to not to use such language and he is not going to tolerate any disrespect to Chaudhary Charan Singh. He said the former Prime Minister stands for impeccable public life, unimpeachable integrity, and commitment to farmers. He said he had seen with his own eyes the condemnation, shouting and sloganeering.

PM Modi declared on Friday that the former Prime Minister of India, Chaudhary Charan Singh will be conferred the Bharat Ratna which is the country’s highest civilian honour. Chaudhary Charan Singh was born in 1902 in Noorpur, in the Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh, in a middle- class peasant family. He graduated in science in 1923 and did his masters at the Agra University in 1925.

He trained in law and set up practice in Ghaziabad. He shifted to Meerut in 1929 and later joined the Congress. He was elected to the UP legislative assembly in 1937 from Chhaprauli and represented the constituency in 1946, 1952, 1962 and 1967. He later became the parliamentary secretary in Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant’s government in 1946 and worked in various departments such as revenue, Medical and Public Health, Justice, information etc. In June 1951, he was appointed Cabinet Minister in Uttar Pradesh and was made in charge of Departments of Justice and Information.