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Warring, Manpreet tussle for control of Bathinda MC hots up
The power struggle between two arch-rivals, Punjab state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and BJP leader Manpreet Badal, over control of Bathinda municipal corporation, heated up on Saturday.
The power struggle between two arch-rivals, Punjab state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and BJP leader Manpreet Badal, over control of Bathinda municipal corporation, heated up on Saturday. Raja Warring held a secret meeting with Congress councillors in Bathinda on Saturday night.
After the meeting, senior deputy mayor Ashok Pradhan claimed 25 councillors got together to express solidarity with the Congress party. This comes after a group of about 18 councillors met Manpreet at his farmhouse in Muktsar’s Badal village on January 20.
“Some of the Congress councillors had met the former finance minister Manpreet Badal, who switched loyalty to the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on January 18. But hardly anyone is leaving the party. In fact, three councillors, who met Manpreet on a personal front, were present in last night’s meeting with Raja Warring and we are confident that more councillors elected on the Congress ticket will remain with the party,” Pradhan asserted.
Bathinda district Congress president Rajan Garg said on Sunday that a common consensus has been built to remove Raman Goyal, the first woman mayor who is considered to be a close confidant of Manpreet.
“There has been strong resentment among the Congress councillors about how a political novice was handpicked. The resentment was so much that a veteran Congressman like Jagroop Gill had to leave the party. Now her removal as mayor is inevitable,” Garg said.
Two days after joining the Saffron Party, Manpreet’s camp started giving strong feelers of a political coup and projected that he had engineered a switch of Congress councillors to the BJP to make the Bathinda mayor a Saffron candidate. But after Raja Warring and Congress’ pushback, things became a bit tricky on Sunday for Manpreet, who visited the houses of several Congress councillors.
Deputy mayor Master Harmander Singh, who was among those who met Manpreet on Friday, today said he would remain loyal to the Congress.
“Manpreet is an old associate, and I went to Badal on his invitation. Like on other occasions, he visited my residence today. But not much should be looked into it, as I would not leave the Congress at any cost,” he added.
Sensing the political prestige of Congress at stake, Warring rushed to Bathinda on Saturday. The Congress party had registered its first-ever majority in the municipal elections of 2021. He held a meeting with councillors and senior party leaders from Bathinda for more than two hours at a private school managed by a Congress leader. In the 50-member Bathinda MC house, Congress holds 41 seats. Veteran councillor Jagroop Gill left Congress and switched to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He won the Bathinda Urban seat last year, defeating five-time Congress candidate Manpreet Badal by over 63,000 votes.
Gill’s nephew Sukhdeep Dhillon, who was elected from ward number 2, followed him to join the AAP. Congress candidate Vivek Garg from ward-14 joined the BJP last year, leaving Congress with 41 in the MC house. Seven others are supporters of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
