The 22-member core committee of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has finalised five party candidates for Punjab for 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Of the five, MPs Bhagwant Mann and Sadhu Singh will contest from the constituencies they represent now, Sangrur and Faridkot, respectively.
The names of the other three candidates were not revealed. “Five candidates have been selected. We cannot disclose other names, but Mann and Sadhu will contest from their own constituencies,” said Budhlada MLA Budh Ram, who heads the core committee.
Sources said all 13 candidates would be announced within a month.
“It is the party’s decision to field me from the Sangrur segment. I will accept this. I was born here and have been working in the constituency since the beginning of my political career,” Mann told HT.
Sources said Mann was also offered the option of fighting from Bathinda, but he decided to fight from Sangrur. In the 2017 state assembly polls, the AAP had bagged five of 11 assembly segments in Sangrur and Barnala districts that is the Parliamentary constituency of Mann. On October 11, in an interview with HT, AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, had said that the party would fight on all Lok Sabha seats in Punjab on its own.