New Delhi, May 14
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s newly-elected Jalandhar MP Sushil Kumar Rinku met party’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi on Sunday. He was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on the occasion.
Rinku had recorded a landslide victory by winning the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll by 58,691 votes after he polled 3,02,279 votes. For the AAP, this victory means gaining one Lok Sabha seat since it has had no representative there since March 2022.
Now with the help of this victory, the AAP has once again got a chance to raise important issues in the Lower House of Parliament. There was no representation of the AAP in the Lok Sabha for the last one year. The party’s lone Lok Sabha MP Bhagwant Mann became the Chief Minister of Punjab in March 2022 after which he resigned from the MP post.
Mann was an MP from the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat of Punjab. The by-election was held on this seat vacated by him in 2022, but the AAP suffered a major political setback.
The defeat in the 2022 Lok Sabha by-election was a severe blow to the AAP because the party’s representation in the Lok Sabha stood at zero. Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) candidate Simranjit Singh Mann won the 2022 Sangrur Lok Sabha by-election by defeating AAP candidate Gurmail Singh on this seat.
The AAP believes that the victory in the Punjab Lok Sabha bypoll is a new beginning.
The party has started its political innings afresh in the Lok Sabha. In 2014, the AAP had MPs on four Lok Sabha seats, but in 2019 it managed victory only on one such seat.
