Mahinder Singh Kaypee joins Shiromani Akali Dal after leaving the Congress

Mahinder Singh Kaypee, 67, the head of the PCC and a former MP for the Jalandhar Congress, left the party on Monday to join Shiromani Akali Dal.

Sukhbir Badal, the leader of Akali Dal, paid him a visit this afternoon to welcome him. Son of the terrorist-killed former minister Darshan Singh Kaypee, he has served as Punjab’s minister twice and is a well-known Dalit leader in the party.

From the Jalandhar South Assembly seat (now known as Jalandhar West), Kaypee served as an MLA three times, in 1985, 1992, and 2002. In 1992, he also held the positions of Minister of Technical Education and Transport as well as Minister of State for Youth and Sports Affairs.

He had previously lost the same seat to Chunni Lal Bhagat of the BJP in 1997 and 2007. In 2009, he was elected as a Jalandhar MP. He continued to serve as the head of the PPCC throughout this time. In 2012, his wife, Suman Kaypee, ran as a candidate from Jalandhar West but was defeated by Bhagat once again. After being rejected for the Jalandhar MP seat in 2014, he was nominated as a contender in Hoshiarpur, where he was defeated by Vijay Sampla of the BJP.

He lost out on a Jalandhar West ticket in 2017; Sushil Rinku, the current BJP Lok Sabha candidate, was given the ticket instead. Rather, a ticket for the Adampur Assembly seat was handed to him, but he lost against Pawan Tinu, the Akali leader at the time, once more.

Tinu is currently the AAP’s candidate for Lok Sabha.

He continued to be angry in 2019 about his rejection of a Lok Sabha ticket. However, he was appeased by Capt. Amarinder Singh, the then-CM, who gave him the Cabinet position and went on to name him Chairman of the Punjab Technical Education Board.

When Charanjit Channi, the current Congress candidate, was the chief minister in 2022, the party withheld information from him until the very last minute about the ticket. He had already gone to the returning officer’s office and began submitting his candidacy from the Adampur Assembly sector, but the party unexpectedly gave the ticket to Sukhwinder Kotli, the loyalist of MLA Pargat, and she won.

It’s being reported that Kaypee’s decision to leave Congress and join Akali Dal was motivated by his pain towards Pargat and Channi, whose nephew is married to Kaypee’s daughter. Kaypee and Pargat are both from the Jalandhar village of Mithapur.