With Rajya Sabha elections in Punjab scheduled on March 31, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) submitted the names of five candidates. The list include IIT's Sandeep Pathak, former cricketer Harbhajan Singh, Delhi legislator Raghav Chadha, Lovely Professional University Chancellor Ashok Mittal, and Krishna Pran Breast Cancer Care Charitable Trust founder Sanjiv Arora.
The upper house elections are on March 31, for which names have to be submitted on Monday. With the candidates from Punjab, AAP’s strength will go up from three to eight in Rajya Sabha.
Earlier, 10 AAP MLAs, including a woman, were inducted in the Bhagwant Mann-led Cabinet in Punjab. Governor Banwarilal Purohit administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers at Punjab Bhawan. Among the 10, eight are first-time MLAs. All of them took the oath in Punjabi.
Punjab governor had on Wednesday administered the oath of office and secrecy to Bhagwant Mann, who was sworn in as chief minister at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.
The AAP bagged 92 seats in the 117-member Punjab assembly, decimating the Congress, the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party combine, and the BJP-Punjab Lok Congress-SAD (Sanyukt) alliance.