Questions raised over her silence, echo of slap by husband gets louder for AAP MLA

Empowering women is not a deterrent to stop violence against women.Shocking to see @BaljinderKaur_ MLA getting slapped in broad day light.Mindset of men has to change.
The problem lies in the perpetrator’s of these acts.Change this male chauvinism attitude more then anything else pic.twitter.com/Qxm6rhrtht

— Brinder (@brinderdhillon) September 1, 2022

Then an English professor at Mata Gujri College, Fatehgarh Sahib, Baljinder, who belongs to a village in Talwandi Sabo, first dabbled with politics in 2011 when she joined the Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption movement. In 2012, as Arvind Kejriwal and others broke away to form the AAP, she formally joined the party while continuing in her job.

In 2014, as AAP made its fledgling entry into Punjab, Baljinder was among its better-known names, which earned the 29-year-old a ticket for the Talwandi Sabo Assembly seat bypoll. While she got only 13,699 votes and lost her security deposit, there was no looking back for Baljinder.

In 2017, in an election where AAP emerged as the main Opposition, ahead of the Akali Dal, Baljinder – touted by the party as “a daughter of the soil” – won the Talwandi Sabo seat by a margin of 19,293 votes.

One big reason for her popularity was her accessibility, especially among women, prompting AAP to name her president of its women’s wing. AAP leaders say she motivated many women across several districts to join the party.

In February 2019, Baljinder and Sukhraj got married. There was much festivity around the event, with invites going out to MLAs across parties, the wedding invitation card read out by then Speaker Rana Kaypee Singh in the Assembly, and sitting Chief Minister Amarinder Singh inviting the newly wed couple to his house.

Sukhraj, a former president of the Guru Nanak Dev University Students’ Union, spoke to the media about his family’s old Akali Dal links, and said he switched to AAP in 2016 due to the “damage” caused by the Akalis to the Panth and their “support” for the drug mafia. The convenor of AAP’s Majha zone youth wing, Sukhraj also said he appreciated AAP’s stand of “one family, one ticket” and promised to serve the party in whatever capacity it thought fit.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls that followed soon after, AAP again turned to Baljinder in its quest for winnable candidates. The sitting MLA was fielded from the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat (Talwandi Sabo comes under it) against stalwarts such as the Congress’s Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and the Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal. Baljinder came in third but got a respectable 1.34 lakh votes.

However, party watchers noted one crucial difference: this time, Baljinder’s campaign was largely managed by Sukhraj, instead of her father and brother as earlier.

As Baljinder continued as an MLA after the Lok Sabha loss, and delivered a daughter, her absence in her own constituency became prominent.

Ahead of the 2022 Assembly poll campaign, this was one of the main allegations thrown at Baljinder, of being hardly visible in the constituency since her wedding, and not helping solve people’s issues such as jobs at the Bathinda refinery. Sources admitted her campaign organisers had to face public ire.

While Baljinder did scrape through, by a margin of 15,252 votes, she was among the handful of sitting AAP MLAs who saw their victory margin fall. Subsequently, contrary to expectations, she wasn’t inducted into the Bhagwant Mann-led Cabinet.

Villagers are dismayed at the video of the assault on Baljinder by her husband, stressing that she needs to clear the air before it does even more damage. While the video was recorded on July 10, it came into the public eye on September 1. Baljinder did not file any complaint with police.

Both Sukhraj, who now spends a large chunk of his time in the Talwandi Sabo constituency, and Baljinder haven’t commented on the video. A day after the video went viral, as CM Mann visited Talwandi Sabo, Baljinder was with him, but both stayed away from the row.

AAP chief spokesperson Malwinder Singh Kang told The Indian Express that “the party doesn’t want to comment on anyone’s personal life”.

Harinder Kaur Bindu, president of the women’s wing of the BKU Ugrahan, said Baljinder’s silence was making things worse. “Every day we come across women who have faced domestic violence. In many cases, groups of women gather to corner the guilty husband… Now if people know that a two-time MLA too suffered and didn’t complain to police… many women may think that if she can suffer, so could they.”