AAP's Punjab CM face to contest from this constituency

Bhagwant Mann, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) chief ministerial candidate for the Punjab assembly elections next month, will contest from his home soil of Sangrur’s Dhuri assembly constituency. Mann is a two-term serving MP from the state’s Sangrur parliamentary constituency and heads the AAP’s Punjab unit.

The ruling Congress now holds the Dhuri assembly seat, with Dalvinder Singh Khangura ‘Goldy’ as the current MLA. The party has controlled the seat since 2012, when its nominee, Arvind Khanna, won the assembly elections from here that year, followed by Khangura in 2017.

Meanwhile, Arvind Kejriwal, the party’s president and Delhi chief minister, declared Mann, a former stand-up comic who joined the AAP in 2014, as the party’s choice for the CM’s chair on Tuesday. The Sangrur MP’s name was released after the Aam Aadmi Party launched a phone number last week for Punjabis to give names for the party’s nominee for the border state’s top office.

Punjab will have a single-phase election on February 20. Voting was supposed to take place on February 14th. However, because the date overlaps with Ravidas Jayanti, almost all political parties in the state, including the Congress, have demanded that the elections be rescheduled. On Monday, the election commission revealed the revised date.