Jalandhar, April 24: Denied the BJP ticket, sitting Hoshiarpur MP Vijay Sampla on Tuesday used his Twitter account to vent his ire.
Sampla deleted “Chowkidar” from his account and wrote in Hindi, “Bahut dukh hua BJP ne gau hatya kar di.” A second tweet followed soon after: “Please tell me my mistake. There is no corruption charge against me.”
Having seen a meteoric rise in his political career, from a sarpanch to an MP in 2014 to Union Minister of State with an additional role as state BJP chief in 2016, the Dalit face of the party in Punjab today suffered a setback as it chose his bete noire, Phagwara MLA Som Parkash, as his replacement. In 2017, under Sampla’s presidentship, the BJP won an all-time low of three of 23 seats in Punjab Assembly elections.
Som Parkash was one of the three MLAs who won, that too despite open opposition to his candidature by Sampla.
Later, a series of complaints that Som Parkash and ex-MLAs Arunesh Shakar of Mukerian and Sukhjit Sahi of Dasuya launched against Sampla during his tenure as Punjab BJP chief also made the party replace Sampla with Malik last year. Sampla’s nephews also invited trouble for him, getting embroiled in various controversies during his tenure. Besides having won the 2017 election, Parkash had another claim to the ticket. The fact that he lost to Congress’ Santosh Chawdhary in 2009 with just 366 votes was not lost on his supporters, including Union Minister Arun Jaitley. Parkash will face Congress’Raj Kumar Chabbewal, who too is a Punjab MLA, in the Lok Sabha polls.
