Days after a landslide victory in recently concluded Assembly elections in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party has nominated its five nominees for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ashok Kumar Mittal, the Chancellor of Lovely Professional University, was one among the AAP’s five Rajya Sabha nominees. He is described by the party as a renowned academician and social activist. A part of the Lovely Group founded by late Baldev Raj Mittal, the University was established in 2001 as the “largest private university” and is an example of coming up the hard way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Group began with a sweetshop in Jalandhar Cantonment in 1961 and by the 1980s, had become a must-visit sweets destination in all of Jalandhar. It branched into a two-wheeler dealership of Bajaj Auto in 1991 and then started a Maruti Suzuki car dealership in 1996. Slowly and steadily, the Group built up its goodwill and corpus. The result of which is the Lovely Professional University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AAP has picked former cricketer Harbhajan Singh, AAP Delhi MLA and Punjab campaign head Raghav Chadha, Indian Institute of Technology Professor Sandeep Pathak, apart from Mittal and industrialist Sanjeev Arora as its representatives due to be elected to the Rajya Sabha, which seems a foregone conclusion given that the party holds 92 seats in the 117-member House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The choices of Chadha, Pathak and Mittal has thrown open a can of allegations against AAP for not choosing people within Punjab and instead relying on its Delhi goodwill and awarding loyalists from the capital and experts from other fields. Twitter is awash with allegations that the party gave Rajya Sabha seats to billionaires in Delhi and has now made room for Mittal who runs the Lovely Professional University, another billionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several heavyweights from Punjab bit the dust in the recent Assembly elections. AAP hasn’t rewarded the people, a few of them highly qualified, who came up with such Herculean feats. Among the defeated were outgoing Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, former CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal, and former Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann have reiterated to their MLAs that the party will not tolerate corruption. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are 13 Rajya Sabha seats to which elections will be held on March 31 and today is the last day of filling nomination for the Punjab Rajya Sabha elections. The Punjab MLAs will vote for 5 MPs, 3 will be elected from Kerala, 2 from Assam, and one each from Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Tripura.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AAP picks Harbhajan Singh, Raghav Chadha, and others as its Rajya Sabha candidates from Punjab, check full list<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n