Aam Aadmi Party shun Sikh candidates for Delhi

By World Sikh News | INDIA |

Deny­ing nom­i­na­tions to sit­ting Sikh mem­bers of the Delhi leg­is­la­ture, ex­cept Jar­nail Singh from the Tilak Na­gar con­stituency, in the 70 can­di­dates list an­nounced to­day by the party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has started on the wrong foot in dis­pleas­ing the Sikh res­i­dents in many con­stituen­cies of Delhi.

As per the list re­leased to­day by the Po­lit­i­cal Af­fairs Com­mit­tee of the party, Av­tar Singh Kalkaji from the Kalkaji con­stituency and Jagdeep Singh from the Hari Na­gar con­stituency have been left out of the list.

The new Sikh en­trant on the list is Prahlad Singh Sawh­ney from the Chandni Chowk con­stituency, who is ac­tu­ally a Con­gress party vet­eran, who left his party to join AAP.

For­mer jour­nal­ist Jar­nail Singh was not in the reck­on­ing and Har­jeet Singh who lost from Ra­jouri Gar­den to Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa was also not con­sid­ered.

There are as many as 15 con­stituen­cies in Delhi which have an over­whelm­ing Sikh pres­ence and it would be in­ter­est­ing to see on which side the Sikh vot­ers turn to.

A young Sikh voter told WSN, “No can­di­date can win in West Delhi with­out the sup­port of the Sikh com­mu­nity.”

World Sikh News learns that Sikh res­i­dents are up­set with the de­vel­op­ment and strongly feel that like the BJP and the Con­gress Party, the AAP has also ditched them.

A young Sikh lan­guage ex­pert, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity said, “AAP has not taken up the is­sue of Pun­jabi lan­guage teach­ers in Delhi and sim­i­larly the work of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the 84 car­nage vic­tims has been a day­dream.”

Gurmeet Singh – a re­li­gious and so­cial ac­tivist from Delhi, while speak­ing to WSN said, “Sikhs of Delhi will have to make a choice on the ba­sis of can­di­dates and not of po­lit­i­cal par­ties.”

Un­doubt­edly, gen­er­ally speak­ing, AAP has de­liv­ered on the ed­u­ca­tion and health front and the pop­u­la­tion of Delhi is happy on these fronts, but the po­lit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and stance of the Aam Aadmi Party have been way­ward, which many a time has left the mi­nori­ties wor­ried.

See original story, ‘Aam Aadmi Party de­nies whole­some rep­re­sen­ta­tion to Sikhs in Delhi’ (World Sikh News, 14 Jan 2020), here.