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Sources said he had a discussion with former Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh and the announcement of his joining “is not far”. Confirming his reported meeting with Amarinder, Jagtar said, “All loyalists of the Tohra legacy are feeling suffocated in the SAD and I am no different.”
Son of former MLA from Samana, Hardial Singh Rajla, Jagtar was considered a close confidant of late Akali leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra. He was elected as the MLA from Samana in 1997, but was not given the ticket in 2007.
“When Gurcharan Singh Tohra re-joined SAD, I was promised a ticket from Samana by the Badals. But once Tohra died, no one bothered about Tohra loyalists,” he said.
“I was ignored to favour an outsider,” he said without naming the party nominee from Samana in 2007, Surjit Singh Rakhra. Rakhra had lost the election. He said he had met SAD president Sukhbir Badal and asked him to do something about the “repeated sidelining”.
SAD’s Patiala Lok Sabha candidate Prem Singh Chandumajra, however, sounded hopeful of resolving the differences. He said, “I will talk to Rajla and urge him not to quit the party,” adding, “at this stage we want leaders to join us and not leave us.”
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