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{Punjab polls 2022/Row over ticket} Maluka indifferent to SAD efforts to pacify him
Punjab’s SAD leadership is trying to pacify him over the issue of him being announced as the party candidate from Rampura Phul for the assembly elections due in 2022; he wanted to contest from Maur, with his son to be given the ticket from Rampura Phul
Bathinda Former Punjab minister Sikander Singh Maluka continues to be in a dissent mode, even as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leadership is trying to pacify him over the issue of him being announced as the party candidate from Rampura Phul for the assembly elections due in 2022.
Maluka, a two-time MLA and once a blue-eyed aide of SAD patriach Parkash Singh Badal, has not issued any statement since Sunday, the day he expressed displeasure over the ticket allocation.
Maluka is keen to contest from Maur and wanted his son Gurpreet Singh Maluka, a former chairperson of Bathinda zila parishad, to be given the SAD ticket from Rampura Phul. Since then, Jagmeet Brar has been announced as SAD candidate from Maur.
On Wednesday, SAD general secretary Bikram Majithia met Maluka in Chandigarh and on Thursday Brar called on the ex-MLA’s native village in Bathinda.
At a press conference at Chandigarh on Thursday, Majithia showed photos of the Maluka father-son duo with him the previous day, claiming that there was no dissent in the party from any quarters. There has been no statement by the SAD indicating that Gurpreet’s name is under consideration for a ticket.
Maluka’s last public appearance, however, was in Maur on Sunday where he expressed his anger against the leadership for ignoring his earlier appeal to consider Gurpreet from Rampura Phul. Since then Maluka and his son Gurpreet remained incommunicado. Both are not holding any public meetings for five days and there has been no post on their Facebook pages. Sources said Maluka is trying to meet former chief minister Badal.
Political watchers said what may have embarrassed the once all-powerful Akali leader is that in spite of Maluka’s public utterances, the party took no time in announcing the name of Brar, a party-hopper, as its candidate from Maur.
Brar was with the Congress for over three decades and was elected MP twice before he was shown the door in April 2016 for “indiscipline and working against the party’s interest in Punjab.” In November 2016, he joined the Trinamool Congress but in less than two years, quit as its Punjab chief.
Brar’s entry into the SAD in 2019 was interesting, as before this his entire electoral career had been focused against Akali patriarch Badal and his son and now SAD president Sukhbir Badal. Sources said former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal had pushed for his induction.
“Maluka was eyeing two party tickets from Bathinda. The SAD, however, did not want giving the baton of the political management of their traditional electoral bastion to one family. Clipping Maluka’s wings and his open dissent over ticket distribution was unexpected. Brar is a resident of Muktsar and never contested election from any of Bathinda Lok Sabha seats, but the Badal family is banking on him to curtail any parallel political force in the constituency,” said an observer.
