A day after constituting an 11-member committee of the Lok Punjab Front (LPF), the suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP from Patiala Dr. Dharamvira Gandhi said on Tuesday that the front was in talks with the Left and other like-minded parties in an attempt to bring Pro-Punjab people under one umbrella ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections due early next year.
“We are in talks with the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), besides other ‘like-minded’ people, and we are optimistic that in the next 7-10 days, new parties and people would be on board with us,” Dr. Gandhi, a patron of the Lok Punjab Front, told The Hindu.
Platform for breakaways
The LPF is being seen as a platform that could bring together all breakaway groups, smaller fronts and political parties that are in the election fray, and establish a fourth front to collectively take on the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) combine, the Congress and the AAP.
“People have lost faith in AAP, which was once seen as a party with difference. It’s now vital that people and parties should come together on one Pro-Punjab platform to liberate Punjab from the decades old clutches of the misrule by the SAD-BJP and Congress regimes,” he said.
Varied support
Dr. Gandhi said the need for a fourth front was felt after the AAP failed to stick to its values, and its national convener Arvind Kejriwal failed to gauge the sentiments of the people of Punjab and the kind of politics Punjab needs.
“AAP’s Punjab unit is being controlled directly from Delhi like a colony...sycophancy has become the norm, which has destroyed the party,” he said.
He added that Sucha Singh Chhotepur’s Apna Punjab Party has also extended its support to the fourth front for the sake of Punjab and its future.
The Democratic Swaraj Party, floated in May this year by AAP rebels, has already extended support to Dr. Gandhi’s front as it feels there is “a need to give the people of Punjab political space for alternative politics”.
Also, the Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Party, the Amritsar Voluntary Group, the Apna Party Group, and many other smaller political groups, have extended their support to the front.
“Even if our front contests on a limited number of seats, our aim would remain to change the political system in which there is complete functional democracy. We have to make sure that the bureaucracy and police is free from the clutches of politicians,” said Dr. Gandhi.
The people have lost faith in the Aam Aadmi Party, which was once seen as a party with a difference
Dharamvira Gandhi
Lok Punjab Front patron
