SAD, Cong, BJP, AAP: Kamaljit Karwal jumps ship again ahead of Ludhiana West bypoll
Kamaljit Singh Karwal from Ludhiana has perhaps made the term 'Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram' seem feeble, if his political career is anything to go by.
Ahead of the June 19 Ludhiana West bypoll, Karwal once again jumped ship Sunday and re-joined the Congress. This is Karwal's sixth switch — from SAD, Congress, BJP, AAP and now back to the Congress — all in a little over a decade.
Joining the party in the presence of Congress' bypoll candidate Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Jalandhar MP Charanjit Singh Channi and Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh, Karwal said, 'Outraged by the anti-people policies of the AAP government, and their indifference towards Punjabis, I have done aghar waapsi today.'
Elected an independent councillor in 2007 and then on SAD symbol in 2012, Karwal was once the right hand man of two-time former Atam Nagar MLA and SAD rebel Simarjeet Singh Bains. He left SAD along with Bains after they formed their own political group. However, Karwal's relations with Bains soured and he was again back to SAD in January 2015 in the presence of then deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal.
In December 2016, ahead of the 2017 Punjab assembly elections, Karwal joined Congress in the presence of former CM Captain Amarinder Singh. He then contested assembly elections from Atam Nagar twice on Congress ticket — in 2017 and 2022— and lost both. In both contests, he was pitted against his bete noire Simarjeet Singh Bains. While in 2017 Bains won, in 2022 both Bains and Karwal lost to AAP's Kulwant Singh Sidhu.
Later, in the run-up to 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Karwal quit Congress and switched to BJP. He joined BJP in the presence of state president Sunil Jakhar in Chandigarh in December 2023, and said that he left Congress due ' to poor leadership at all levels, policies and highhandedness in the party'.
Karwal then moved to the AAP in December 2024, and was 'welcomed' into the party by state president Aman Arora at Chandigarh.
Now when he is back to Congress, the 'Bains brothers' — Simarjeet and his elder brother (also an ex-MLA) Balwinder Singh Bains — are also in Congress. Last year, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, they had merged their Lok Insaaf Party with the Congress.
However, when Karwal 're-joined' Congress in the presence of Ashu, both Bains brothers were missing from the event, and so was Punjab Congress chief and Ludhiana Lok Sabha MP Amrinder Singh Raja Warring who had inducted Bains brothers into the party last year.
Asked why he keeps switching parties, Karwal said: 'Congress is like a family for me and fights keep happening in a family. I had joined BJP but realized that it doesn't have any future in Punjab. No matter how hard they try, they can never form government in Punjab. I have no issues with Bains brothers being in Congress. We all will work for the party as per assigned duties.'
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.
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