Chandigarh: Setting a precedent in Haryana, the former minister and four-time Congress MLA Nirmal Singh, who had joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) two days ago, announced to forgo his pensions for three terms on the lines of Punjab AAP legislators here on Saturday.
It may be recalled that the AAP government in Punjab had last month announced that all the MLAs would get the pension for one term and not for each term served by them as was the practice in the past.
Singh who along with his daughter Chitra, also a former Congress leader, had joined the AAP in Delhi on Thursday and also merged his Haryana Democratic Front (HDF) with AAP, announced that he would take pension for only one term and not for all the four terms, here at a press conference when Delhi MLA Sushil Gupta, Haryana in-charge of AAP, was also present.
The father-daughter duo had left Congress after they were denied tickets by the Congress in 2019 assembly polls. Anguished, both quit Congress and floated HDF and contested as independent candidates against the BJP candidates.
Speaking on the occasion, Gupta said that the AAP members had joined politics to do the politics of sacrifices.
Meanwhile, even the AAP focus appeared to be on poll-bound Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat after its landslide win in Punjab last month, it has nonetheless also been making inroads in Haryana, if the joining of various leaders of different parties in the past month is any indication.
A few days ago, former Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who had switched over to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in November last year, had joined the AAP in the presence of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. The former Sirsa MP Tanwar had left the Congress ahead of the 2019 Haryana assembly polls after bitter differences with former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Tanwar, a Dalit leader, who was considered to be close to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had launched his own Apna Bharat Morcha in February last year and later, in November, joined the TMC.
Also, several other leaders who joined AAP recently include former Haryana BJP executive member and MLA Umesh Aggarwal, former INLD leader and minister Balbir Singh Saini, former Congress leader and minister Bijender Singh Kadian from Panipat, former Samalkha MLA (independent) Ravindra Kumar Machhrauli and Raj Kumar Balmiki, an INLD leader.
In its maiden elections in Haryana, the AAP had got barely 60,000 votes contesting 46 of the 90 assembly seats in 2019.
