Bhagwant Mann will be the Chief Minister of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab. AAP will have more than two-thirds majority in the 117-seat state assembly. It is clear that Mann will not face any problem in taking decisions. There will be no threat to his chair of the Chief Minister. He is the only face in AAP’s Punjab. Due to the fight for the chief minister’s chair, Punjab fell out of the hands of the Congress.
Mann becoming Chief Minister reminds us of Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky, 44, was also a comedian before becoming president of Ukraine. Let us know the story of Mann becoming a Chief Minister from a comedian.
48-year-old Bhagwant Mann has been a two-time MP from Sangrur in Punjab. He is also your state president. Sangrur comes under the Malwa region of Punjab, which is considered very sensitive from the point of view of politics. Mann was born in the village of Satoj, Sangrur in 1973. Before joining politics, he was a comedian.
In 2008, he participated in Star Plus’s Great Indian Laughter Challenge. In this the audience saw his comedy. He has also worked in the film ‘Main Ma Punjab Di’. The director of this film was Balwant Dulat. The film won the National Award.
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Mann joined politics in February 2012. He contested from Lehra (Sangrur) against former Punjab Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal on People’s Party of Punjab ticket. He lost the election. Then he joined AAP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He won the Sangrur seat by 2,11,721 votes. He remained in you in spite of the internal strife. He resigned as state AAP chief in 2018 after AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal apologized to former Punjab minister and Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia.
Mann again became AAP chief in Punjab in 2018. He won the 2019 election by 1,11,111 votes. This was AAP’s only victory in Punjab. Then there was a tremendous wave of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the country. In the Modi wave, the BJP won more than 300 Lok Sabha seats. But, Mann managed to save his seat. Arvind Kejriwal was very happy with this.
Before the Punjab elections, Kejriwal had given a phone number. He had asked people to give their preference for chief minister on that phone number. Later, Kejriwal had said that 93 per cent of the people wanted to see Mann as the chief minister of the state. Then he publicly declared Mann as the chief ministerial face of AAP.
The future Chief Minister of Punjab has been associated with controversies. He has been accused of drinking too much alcohol. He was often seen drunk even during the day. Because of this his name was called ‘Paagwant Mann’. He has been accused of drunkenness till coming to Parliament. He claimed to have given up alcohol in 2019 in the presence of his mother Harpal Kaur.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had quipped Mann in February 2017. Referring to a principle of the famous Indian philosopher Charvaka, he had said that instead of drinking ghee, people would ‘ask them to drink something else’. But, Mann uses his art of laughing openly even during his speech in the Lok Sabha.
AAP is giddy after winning 90 seats in Punjab. “Punjab will no longer be known as Udta Punjab. Now it will be called ‘Utta Punjab’,” AAP’s Punjab in-charge Raghav Chadha said after AAP’s big jump in election results. His reference was to the 2016 film ‘Udta Punjab’, which was shown about the problem of drug abuse in Punjab.
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