BJP's Chandigarh candidate pins hope on 'Modi wave', local roots for 'landslide' win

Chandigarh: Local roots and a "strong Modi wave" will help him score a "landslide" victory in the Chandigarh Lok Sabha election, feels BJP candidate Sanjay Tandon.

Tandon took a dig at Congress candidate Manish Tewari, who fought the 2009 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Ludhiana and Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, saying, "Chandigarh needs a person who is one of them and who has been with them through thick and thin." The BJP has been calling Tewari an "outsider" in Chandigarh while the Congress leader has hit back, saying he has local roots.

The 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Chandigarh will be held in a single phase on June 1. The votes will be counted on June 4.

Sixty-year-old Tandon, the son of former Chhattisgarh governor and one of the founding members of the Jan Sangh late Balramji Das Tandon, has replaced incumbent MP Kirron Kher while the Congress has named senior party leader Tewari (58), for the electoral fight in Chandigarh.

Kher won the lone Chandigarh seat in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, defeating Congress' Pawan Kumar Bansal. Bansal was elected MP from Chandigarh in 1991, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

This time, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, which are part of the INDIA bloc, are fighting the polls from Chandigarh in an alliance.

"There is a strong Modi wave," Tandon asserted.

When BJP workers visit people's houses while campaigning, they are told, ‘Saada vote Modi nu (our vote is for Modi)', Tandon said, adding, "We are heading for a landslide victory." He claimed that the people of Chandigarh are enthusiastic over his nomination as he is a local resident and has a connection with them.

A poll campaign named -- ‘Hamara Sanjay Tandon’ -- has been initiated, he said.

"I will be going door-to-door and there will be a heart-to-heart connect,” said Tandon, a chartered accountant by profession.

He said he had been working for the people of the city for the last several years and was available for them whenever they faced any problem.

Replying to a question on Tewari's statement that he was born and raised in Chandigarh, the BJP leader said it is for the people of Chandigarh to decide who is a local resident and who is not.

"Chandigarh needs a person who is one of them. Chandigarh needs a person who has been available for them," he told PTI here.

"Let the people decide who has been available for them and let the people decide who understands the issues of Chandigarh and let the people decide ‘Chandigarh ka beta kaun hai’ (who is the son of Chandigarh)," he added.

Tewari had to tell people that he was born in Chandigarh whereas, "people here know me. If 50 people come to meet me, I know the names of 40 of them," Tandon, who served as the president of the Chandigarh BJP for nearly a decade, said.

Also the party's co-incharge for Himachal Pradesh, Tandon said the Congress-AAP alliance does not pose any challenge to the BJP in the Union Territory.

"Politics works on chemistry, not on mathematics," he said.