Aman Arora replaces Bhagwant Mann as Punjab AAP president
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday named cabinet minister Aman Arora, 50, as the new state president of the party in Punjab.
Chief minister and present state unit chief Bhagwant Mann announced the appointment on X, a day after it was approved by the political affairs committee of the AAP in Delhi. The new and renewable energy minister has replaced Mann, a Jat Sikh, as the state president.
Arora is a prominent Hindu face of the party in Punjab.
His appointment would not only help the AAP attract Hindu voters but also counter the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is making an aggressive push to expand its support base in the state after parting ways with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
Batala MLA Amansher Singh Sherry Kalsi has been made the state working president of the party.
“Today, I have handed over the responsibility of party president to two of my close colleagues, Cabinet minister Aman Arora and MLA Amansher Singh Sherry Kalsi…I have full confidence in both my colleagues that they will strengthen the party and the organisation in Punjab in the coming time and take it to new heights,” Mann posted on X.
After the announcement, Arora and Kalsi thanked AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal, Bhagwant Mann, party national general secretary Sandeep Pathak and the entire political affairs committee for the responsibility given to him.
The appointment of the new state chief, which came a day before the results of the byelections to four assembly constituencies, was in the offing for some time. Mann, who was holding the post since 2017, himself had given the first indication by expressing a desire last month that he would speak to the party’s central leadership for appointing a full-time president of the state unit. “Being chief minister, I have big responsibilities. I have 13-14 departments. I will speak to the party to appoint a full-time state unit chief so that the responsibilities can be divided,” he had said after addressing a party rally in Chabbewal on October 27.
A two-time MLA from Sunam in Sangrur district, Arora, the son of former Punjab minister Bhagwan Das Arora, is a former Congressman who joined the AAP in 2016. He is among those who led the AAP’s rise in Punjab.
Arora was first elected to the assembly in 2017 and then scored a victory by more than 75,000 votes in the 2022 assembly elections, forcing the forfeiture of security deposits of all his opponents.
