Angad Singh, 31, is a hurt man. He was the big hope and the youngest MLA to enter the Punjab assembly in 2017 for the Congress from Nawanshahr. His parents have also been Congress legislators from the same seat in Punjab.
But this time, in a shocking decision for him, Angad was denied a ticket by the Congress last week. He says it was because he refused to indulge in “mudslinging” as demanded by the party against his wife, Aditi Singh, who is now a BJP contestant from Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh. Aditi, a Congress MLA, on January 23 in an interview to News18 had challenged Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to contest against her. A week later, Angad’s name was missing from the Congress list for Punjab.
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“They (Congress) had asked me to do something which was completely unethical, which was against my moral values, which was against my character, and I told them straightforwardly that this is something I can’t do because I have to look into my own eyes in the mirror. It was basically mudslinging. What kind of relationship I share with my family members is totally personal, it has nothing to do with the party. But even if I don’t share a very good relationship with any of my family members, that does not mean I am going to stoop down to mudslinging—that is not Angad Singh,” he tells News18 in an interview in Nawanshahr amidst hectic campaigning. He is now contesting as an independent candidate here.
Angad says the Congress acted hypocritically, making a personal rather than a professional decision. “I feel Congress has always been a secular and liberal party as well which empowers the women to speak their mind; that is what they have been talking about forever. So if an individual is making her own decisions, it should be respected. It is very painful; unfortunately, the work I’ve done in the last five years including development and how I catered to the people of my constituency was totally ignored and my personal issues became a base for them to make a decision. I had also brought the facts to their knowledge so as to tell them what was happening in my life, and asked them not to do this,” he says.
The Nawanshahr seat has been closely associated with Angad’s family. “My parents and I have been staunch Congress workers and part of the Congress family. It is very unfortunate what happened and not the choice that I made. UP is a different state which has nothing to do with Punjab. Why in one household different members cannot have different ideologies?” he asks News18. To a crowd in his native Sanoh village where he inaugurated his poll office, Angad says: “They humiliated me by dragging my family matter into it. This matter should not have gone outside my home.” He also now terms it a “fight between Delhi and Nawanshahr" and a “fight between right and wrong."
This was the only seat that the Congress was confident of winning in the district but now it has lost this too, he claims.
“By not giving me a ticket, they weakened themselves, not me. They weakened Charanjit Singh Channi. From my heart, I wanted to see Channi as CM as he did some good work. All local leaders in Nawanshahr resigned from the Congress after I was denied a ticket,” Angad tells News18.
The constituency is still plastered with posters of Angad with the hand symbol of the Congress but at all public meetings, he reminds voters not to vote for the hand but his auto-rickshaw symbol. “I didn’t leave the Congress but the Congress left me. But there must be some good in this too,” he says.
The Congress here has given a ticket to Satvir Palli Jhikki who was a Captain Amarinder Singh supporter and got a ticket from the former CM’s party before opting for one from the Congress. “He is an outsider. For four years, Jhikki was in charge of Banga where the Congress lost every local election. He backed Captain when the latter formed a separate party,” Angad tells voters. He adds that he was never on good terms with Captain but did his best to bring development to Nawanshahr. “Punjab will be a hung assembly. I think all parties will require 3-4 or more MLAs and Nawanshahr will get its due once it makes its choice in me," Angad says. “It’ll be a khichdi sarkar and tadka will be added to it from Nawanshahr."
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