Lagatar24 Desk
Chandigarh, Jan 15: Ahead of the Assembly elections, former Punjab minister Joginder Singh Mann joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday, a day after snapping his 50-year-old ties with the Congress.
AAP leader and Punjab co-incharge Raghav Chadha said that Mr Mann’s induction will give a huge boost to the party in the state.
“His induction will give a huge boost to the party’s unit in Punjab,” Mr Chadha said in a tweet and also posted a photo showing Mann joining the AAP in the presence of Arvind Kejriwal.
Notably on Friday, Mann resigned from the Congress and said, “I lost eight family members to militancy yet I remained a loyal soldier of the Congress for five decades. Apparently, now the party doesn’t need us that is why our loyalty is considered as our weakness. But it is not so as we are strong enough to safeguard the interests of residents of Phagwara in general and that of underprivileged sections in particular even without the Congress.”
“I had a dream that when I die, the Congress tri-colour will be wrapped around my body but my conscience does not allow me to stay here after seeing the Congress patronising those guilty of the post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Caste students,” the three-time former Phagwara MLA said in a letter to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
Mann further stated that the Congress has been treating the Valmiki or Mazhabi Sikhs as second-class citizens for the past few years, while utilising the group as a vote bank.
