Oldest at 94, Badal files nomination for Punjab polls
Darpan News Desk IANS, 31 Jan, 2022 11:45 AM
Chandigarh, Jan 31 (IANS) Five-time Punjab Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patron Parkash Singh Badal on Monday filed his nomination for the upcoming assembly elections from Lambi constituency in Punjab's Muktsar district.
He is the oldest candidate at 94 for the February 20 polls to the 117-member legislative Assembly.
A five-time MLA from the Lambi constituency, the elderly Badal was the president of the SAD from 1995 to 2008.
Badal had won the 2017 Assembly elections from this seat by defeating Capt Amarinder Singh with 22,770 votes.
The Akali patriarch had started contesting from Lambi in 1997 and won the seat by 28,728 votes, by 23,929 votes in 2002, by 9,187 votes in 2007.
In 2012, he defeated his nearest rival by 24,739 votes.
With the spike in Covid-19 cases, Punjab on Tuesday imposed statewide night curfew daily from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and ordered closure of all educational institutions till January 15.
The accused, identified as Ashish Kumar, tied his wife Ranjan Devi and son Vaibhav to the bed and set them on fire at his house in Mayurwa locality, which comes under the Triveniganj police station.
Nearly 100 students and resident doctors of the Government Medical College in Patiala in Punjab have tested positive for Covid-19, officials said on Tuesday. A retirement party and New Year Eve's party held on the college campus without following appropriate Covid-19 behaviour is blamed for alarming spike in the cases.
With 192 new cases of highly transmissible Covid variant Omicron detected in the last 24 hours, India's Omicron tally on Tuesday rose to 1,892 cases. Maharashtra and Delhi continue to be the worst-hit states with this new variant.
Badal in a statement here listed five major issues on which he said a prime ministerial package would lend credence and respectability to Modi's visit to Punjab on January 5. The former CM also drew the PM's attention to thousands of Sikh families awaiting justice for the massacre of 1984.
Addressing a gathering of Anganwadi workers in Morinda town, the Chief Minister declared that from now onwards the monthly emoluments of the Anganwadi workers stand increased from Rs 8,100 to Rs 9,500, mini-Anganwadi workers from Rs 5,300 to Rs 6,300 and helpers from Rs 4,050 to Rs 5,100.
