First fissures: 3 Amritsar MLAs skip meet called by Bhagwant Mann for feedback on LS polls

However, Amritsar (North) MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, Amritsar (Central) MLA Dr Ajay Gupta, and Amritsar (South) MLA Dr Inderbir Singh Nijjar were conspicuous by their absence.

Sources close to Nijjar said that he was away to Canada while Gupta was not available for comments. When contacted, Kunwar Vijay Pratap said, “No comments.”

Kunwar Vijay Pratap, who was the poster boy of the AAP ahead of 2022 Assembly elections in the state, has often made his displeasure against the party known. Recently, he had written on his social media that gangsters were being inducted into the party and that the core ideology of the AAP was being given a go by.

Gupta on Sunday had announced that he would not work until the AAP leadership “restores the pride of party volunteers” in the government offices. He had said that there was a need to evaluate the reasons leading to the debacle of the party in the Lok Sabha elections. Stating that the debacle comes just two years after AAP stormed to power in the Assembly elections, he said “apparently, the party lost credibility among people in such a short span”.

Nijjar, a former minister, had been keeping quiet. He was removed from the Cabinet by Mann last year.
It is learnt that the fissures in the party had come to fore during Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s road show in Amritsar on May 16. The cavalcade had not reached the spot where Gupta and Kunwar Vijay Pratap had gathered their supporters.

In Monday’s meeting, only two MLAs from Amritsar — Jeevan Jyot Kaur and Jasbir Singh Sandhu — were present.

Sources said the meeting blamed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for consolidating Hindu votes in Amritsar. Similarly in Fatehgarh Sahib, the BJP and Congress took away AAP’s share, the leaders shared.

Mann thanked the AAP workers for their hard work and dedication during the elections and said they were the party’s backbone. He appealed to the party leaders and MLAs to pay special attention to developing their areas, solving the problems of the people and stressing the significance of working at the grassroots level.

He said the party may have lost the elections in Amritsar and Fatehgarh Sahib, but its performance in both the Lok Sabha constituencies has been good as compared to the last Lok Sabha elections.

After the meeting, Mann wrote on X that detailed discussions were held with the party leaders and MLAs about all the Assembly constituencies of Amritsar and Fatehgarh Sahib.