Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Jailed Khalistan sympathiser Amritpal Singh will contest the Lok Sabha Elections from Punjab’s Khadoor Sahib seat as an Independent candidate, his mother Balwinder Kaur confirmed on Friday (April 26). She said that her son has agreed to enter the fray. All 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Punjab will go to polls in the last phase of the seven-phased general elections on June 1. The votes will be counted on June 4.
Earlier on Wednesday, Amritpal Singh's legal counsel Rajdev Singh Khalsa had claimed that the 'Waris Punjab De' chief would contest the elections.
Mother confirms Amritpal’s candidature
Speaking to the media on Friday, Balwinder Kaur said Amritpal has agreed to contest the election.
Amritpal Sing, who has been slapped with stringent National Security Act (NSA), was arrested in April last year in Moga. He, along with nine of his associates, is currently lodged in the Dibrugarh jail in Assam.
He was arrested in Moga's Rode village on April 23 last year following an over one-month-long manhunt.
The Khalistan sympathiser had escaped the police net in Jalandhar district in March 2023, switching vehicles and changing appearances.
The Punjab Police had launched a crackdown after the February 23 Ajnala incident last year in which Amritpal Singh and his supporters, some of them brandishing swords and guns, broke through barricades and barged into the police station on the outskirts of Amritsar city, and clashed with police for the release of one of his aides Lovepreet Singh Toofan.
I don’t consider myself citizen of India: Amritpal Singh
In an interview with news agency ANI in February last year, Amritpal had said that he does "not" consider himself a citizen of India and had called the passport merely a "travel document" stating that it does not make him an Indian.
"Militancy is not something that I am able to start. Nobody can start or end militancy. Militancy is a very natural phenomenon. It happens after a long period of suppression anywhere. Is militancy a constructive thing to start? I can order someone to start militancy, it does not happen like that. There is a peaceful protest. When Amit Shah said that he will suppress things, I said there will be consequences. It's not just about Indira Gandhi's murder as consequence. It's not a threat to Home Minister. I would say is a threat to us. What options do we have when there are legal binaries in India? I don't consider myself a citizen of India. I just have a passport, which does not make me Indian. It's a travel document," he had said.
Amritpal Singh, who is considered to be a radical preacher and sympathiser of Khalistan separatist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, had said that calling him a "terrorist is terrorism" itself and added that he works for the people of Punjab and has an influence on the youth "not for wrong, but for right reasons".
(With inputs from agencies)
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