Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Batala (Gurdaspur), Dec 9
The political career of Sucha Singh Chhotepur has come a full circle as he has now rejoined the party he left 36 years ago. He is the son of former SAD president Mohan Singh Tur.
His proximity to former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh is well-known. Insiders claim he had been getting regular feelers to join the Punjab Lok Congress.
In career spanning almost four decades, Chhotepur has flirted with the Akalis, Congress and the AAP besides floating his own party — Aapna Punjab Party — in 2017. As chief of his outfit, he contested from the Gurdaspur Assembly seat the same year but managed to garner less than a 1,000 votes.
He has now bounced back and will contest from the Batala seat. When the SAD and BJP were alliance partners, the seat was always held by the latter. This development means the Akalis never got a chance to nurture and strengthen their party cadre. The party’s choice of allocating him Batala comes as a surprise to many because he is known to wield influence in the neighbouring seats of Qadian and Dera Baba Nanak.
He started his career by contesting from the Dhariwal seat in 1985. Later, he contested two more elections from Dhariwal before the seat was dissolved ahead of the 2012 polls. Scores of villages of the erstwhile Dhariwal segment were shifted to Dera Baba Nanak and Qadian.
Gurdaspur leader's political innings comes full circle
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