Punjab Elections 2017: Week before results, Bhagwant Mann goes Down Under to thank NRIs

Being speculated as the CM face of AAP, Mann is among the front runners for the post if the party manages to touch the magic number.

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Bhagwant Mann, at Melbourne airport, Australia, Saturday. Express

A week before the much awaited Punjab Assembly election results are out, AAP MP Bhagwant Mann has gone to Australia on a ‘thanksgiving tour’. Mann,who reached Melbourne Saturday morning, said, “It is due to overwhelming love and response from Australia that I am going there before results. I have taken permission from party for the tour.” Before leaving for Australia to attend volunteers meet, Mann also clarified that he will come back before March 11. Claiming that AAP is going to win Punjab, the MP in his message to NRIs stated that ‘once results are out, all Punjabis settled in different countries will be called back home by AAP.’

“Once the results are out, we will call back Punjabis settled across the world back home. We will bring back prosperity in Punjab. Then Punjabis need not struggle in other countries. They will stay blessed in their own home Punjab,” Mann said.

Rakesh Prajapati, AAP Australia convenor told The Indian Express over the phone that Mann would be addressing various public meetings and volunteer thanksgiving meetings till March 7. “People in Australia are very excited to meet Mann. He got a grand welcome at the Melbourne airport today. Close to 250 NRIs from Australia went to Punjab and worked at grassroots before polls. We have already received around 200 phone calls from people who want to meet him,” said Prajapati.

Being speculated as the CM face of AAP, Mann is among the front runners for the post if the party manages to touch the magic number. However, party’s intellectual face and senior SC advocate HS Phoolka is also getting huge support from within the party, said sources.

“Mann is a crowd puller and no doubt he has put in maximum work in past six months to take AAP where it is today but Phoolka ji cannot be ignored when it comes to the chief ministerial post. We are waiting for the results after which Arvind Kejriwal is expected to consult all elected MLAs on CM choice,” said the source.

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More