Months ahead of the Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party has changed its halqa in-charge in Phagwara, replacing young Harnoor Harji Mann with a more seasoned politician and its Hoshiarpur MP Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal.
A radiologist by profession, Dr Chabbewal is now all geared up to contest the coming elections from the reserved seat and re-enter the state politics. He is currently one of the three Lok Sabha MPs of AAP in the state. About a month ago, when seven AAP Rajya Sabha MPs defected to the BJP, there was speculation that two of the party’s three Lok Sabha MPs might follow suit. The move of AAP is being seen as a strategy to appease at least one of them by keeping him engaged in the coming polls.
Dr Chabbewal too maintained, “I have always been happier working in the state politics. I am glad that the party has trusted my capabilities and is giving me a chance to contest from Phagwara, which is already a segment of my Lok Sabha constituency Hoshiarpur." He has twice been MLA from the Chabbewal Assembly segment in 2017 and 2022 on the Congress ticket. He was then also the party’s chief of the SC cell but later joined AAP ahead of 2024 LS polls and won the election.
His son Dr Ishank Chabbewal, who too is a radiologist like his father, is the AAP MLA from the Chabbewal Assembly segment.
While Dr Chabbewal represents the Ravidassia community, Harji Mann is a Majhbi Sikh. Though he remained active, he could not win the confidence of majority of the party workers. Harji’s father Joginder Singh Mann has been a former Congress minister. He had contested on AAP ticket in 2022 but had trailed by 2,700 votes from Congress MLA Balwinder Dhaliwal. But now Dr Chabbewal’s entry in Phagwara has put all his rivals from other parties on an alert mode.
Chabbewal is credited by AAP in Phagwara for one big reason. In Municipal Corporation polls of Phagwara in December 2024, AAP had won only in 12 of 50 wards but Dr Chabbewal had managed to rope in 14 councillors from other parties so as to bring AAP in a position to elect its own Mayor, in which he had succeeded. Dr Chabbewal is expected to start his electioneering in Phagwara in a day or two.
