Bathinda Urban hot seat: Close 4-cornered contest on the cards for first time

Three main contestants from the Bathinda Urban seat have one thing in common, their affiliation with the Congress. The incumbent Congress MLA and finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal is trying his luck for the sixth term as the legislator.

Bathinda: The largest Hindu-dominating urban seat in the south Malwa belt of Punjab, Bathinda is witnessing a close four-cornered contest for the first time.

The largest Hindu-dominating urban seat in the south Malwa belt of Punjab, Bathinda is witnessing a close four-cornered contest for the first time. Manpreet Singh Badal is trying his luck for the sixth term as the legislator.

Three main contestants have one thing in common, their affiliation with the Congress. The incumbent Congress MLA and finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal is trying his luck for the sixth term as the legislator.

Manpreet, who joined the Congress ahead of 2017 elections, is facing an electoral challenge from two ‘taksali’ or old-time Congressmen.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) nominee Jagroop Gill and Bharatiya Janta Party’s (BJP’s) Raj Garg Nambardar, who left the Congress, are contesting the state elections for the first time. Both left the Congress following differences with Manpreet.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidate Sarup Chand Singla, who won the seat in 2012, is contesting the elections for the fourth time in a row.

However, 60-year-old Manpreet is the most experienced among all contestants.

Bathinda has a distinction of giving Punjab two finance ministers in Surinder Singla (2002) and Manpreet (2017).

Since the first assembly elections after Punjab’s bifurcation 1966, the Congress got the mandate on six occasions while Akalis won the seat four times. The segment has an interesting trend of not electing an MLA for the second time since 1985.

A party hopper, Manpreet won the rural Gidderbaha seat four times as SAD candidate before parting ways with the Akalis after forming People’s Party of Punjab in 2011. The next year, he moved his political base from Gidderbaha to Bathinda and prepared a strong political team to win from the new turf.

A shrewd politician Manpreet, who was the co-chairperson of the Congress committee that drafted election manifesto for the 2017 polls, is now on the hit list of opponents for “non-performance” of the Congress government.

Besides Manpreet, his brother-in-law Jaijeet Singh Johal, aka JoJo, who manages the FM’s political office in Bathinda, remains on the target of opponents. However, both have always denied the charge of Johal’s interference in the administration.

Bathinda has a sizeable population of Hindus and followers of Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda. Also, about 14 urban slums and labour colonies are on the electoral radar of candidates.

The urban seat with a sizeable number of government employees has become a hub of protests, targeting the FM for the lack of will to hike their financial benefits. Farmer unions, too, are regularly holding protests in the FM’s constituency against delay in disbursement of compensation to cotton growers whose crop was damaged due to pink bollworm infestation. But Manpreet is working hard to consolidate his support base. He and his family members are engaged with Congress leaders in door-to-door canvassing while also focusing on digital campaigning.

At an election meeting, AAP’s Gill, the sixth-term city councillor, raised non-payment of unemployment allowance and closure of Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant, the oldest power generation facility located in the city. “Manpreet owes an explanation why the state government failed to keep its pre-poll promise of taking stern action against drug trafficking. Waterlogging is a chronic problem in the city but it has not been addressed in the last five years,” said Gill.

In view of the social composition of electors, Nambardar, who was first announced as a candidate of the Punjab Lok Congress (PLC), opted to fight polls on the BJP’s election symbol. An affluent transporter, Nambardar is trying to garner support in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Besides BJP’s ideology of good governance, my campaign is focused against political nepotism and favouritism in Bathinda,” said the BJP nominee.

SAD’s Singla is relying on the development works initiated by him in 2012 and the political vision of the Akali leadership. “Industrial growth centres are crying for attention. Easy availability of narcotics is a serious issue here,” he says.

Manpreet admits much-needed projects like shifting of bus stand and solid waste management plant out of the city could not materialise in his term. “These were stuck due to non-approval by the army headquarters and arbitration. But I prepared a long-term urban development plan to meet futuristic needs, including better drinking water availability in this semi-arid region. Improved hygienic standards, strengthened sewage network, approval of a railway overbridge and underpasses to benefit several colonies of the old localities are among key achievements,” he said.

At every election meeting, he talks about the newly-built swimming pool at a government school at Dhobiana Basti as his vision to improve the standards of public-funded schools.

At the labour colonies, he mentions about free food and Covid-19 care provided for the underprivileged sections by his team during the pandemic-induced lockdown.