The BJP on Thursday announced businessman Swaran Singh Salaria as its candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll. The bypoll is scheduled for October 11, and the last date of filing nominations is on Friday. Earlier, AAP had named Major General (retd) Suresh Khajuria as its candidate from the seat. He filed his nomination papers Thursday. The Congress has announced the name of the state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar. Swaran Singh Salaria’s name was announced by J P Nadda, secretary of the Central Election Committee of the BJP in Delhi.
The Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat fell vacant after the death of the sitting BJP MP, Vinod Khanna, in April this year. Khanna was a four-time MP from this constituency and it was widely expected that his wife, Kavita Khanna, will be allotted this seat. Kavita had been camping in Pathankot for a long period of time and is well known in the constituency. Her name being dropped for the list came as a shock to several senior BJP leaders in the state and might even cause a rift in the party cadres, said a BJP leader from Pathankot. Salaria belongs to Chauhana village in Gurdaspur district. He has business interests in hospitality, aviation and security agency sectors.
An ex-serviceman, who served in an Infantry regiment in the Army as a soldier, he is well known in Mumbai for running a security agency by the name of Trig Guard, which provides security personnel to several well-known actors.
Salaria had staked his claim for the Gurdaspur seat in the 2014 general elections too, but failed. Vinod Khanna won the seat by defeating the then sitting MP, Partap Singh Bajwa, by a big margin.
Salaria had hit the headlines repeatedly in the past several years when the Chintpuri Medical College and Hospital, of which he was the chairman at the time, was refused approval by Medical Council of India for various anomalies in the functioning of the college. Despite this move, the college was accused of having admitted students in 2011, 2014 and 2016.
In September this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had directed the Punjab government to follow the procedure laid out by the Medical Council of India and shift all students of the college to other medical colleges in Punjab.
