Navjot Kaur sore over denial of ticket from Chandigarh

Chandigarh: Upset over not getting a Congress ticket from this Lok Sabha seat, former legislator Navjot Kaur Sidhu on Wednesday said she would have loved if the party had respected a lady and that it is the people who are the actual judge of a candidate.

“It’s okay. That is how the party works,” Sidhu, wife of Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, told reporters.

Former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was re-nominated as the Congress candidate from Chandigarh, which has nearly 6.2 lakh electorates, who will decide its next MP on May 19.

Bansal is likely to be pitted against actor-turned-politician and BJP’s outgoing MP Kirron Kher.

Sidhu said she had been holding public meetings in Chandigarh for the past one and a half months.

“I applied for the ticket myself and I was fighting my own case,” the former legislator from Amritsar said.

Going one step ahead, she said: “If he (Bansal) needs me, I’ll support him. But I do not think he needs me.”

She clarified that there was no competition because of his seniority.

Earlier, she said she was a woman representative of the party and she had done a lot of work in Chandigarh and had a clean image.

Thanking supporters, Sidhu in a message posted on her WhatsApp group said: “All team members have been working exceptionally well for strengthening the party and reaching out to people with our vision for Chandigarh and the party’s vision for our country. Love, hard work, honesty and compassion and keeping selfless service is the mission of our team.”

Another ticket aspirant from Chandigarh was former Union Minister Manish Tewari.

Tewari has been a Lok Sabha MP from Ludhiana.

Thanking the party leadership for reposing faith in him, four-time MP Bansal said: “The Congress is going to form the next government at the Centre as people are feeling cheated by the BJP.”

Bansal has contested seven Lok Sabha elections from Chandigarh, winning four of them in 1991, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

Approximately 40,000 new voters have been added since the 2014 elections.

IANS