Now, Hans ditches Congress for BJP

JALANDHAR: Noted Punjabi singer Hans Raj Hans, who can go from singing pop to Sufi numbers without batting an eyelid, has shown the same flexibility in politics as well. He left the Congress and joined the BJP on Saturday in the presence of party president Amit Shah and national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya. Hans had dumped Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) only two years ago and has now traversed almost the entire political spectrum of Punjab.
The singer termed his joining BJP as ‘ghar wapsi' and that he was not feeling at home in the Congress (dil nahi lagiya ). He was SAD vice-president when he quit the party in December 2014. He has contested only one election - the 2009 Parliament polls- for SAD and lost.
He insisted that he had joined BJP without any preconditions and that he would not contest the upcoming assembly elections in Punjab. "The Congress had offered me a ticket but I refused it," he told TOI. SAD has fielded his brother-in-law, advocate Paramjit Singh Pamma, from Kapurthala general seat. It is a rare instance where a scheduled caste candidate has been fielded on a general seat.
Hans refused to attack Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh and called him "a gem of a person". However, his relationship with Congress leaders had soured within weeks of joining the party. He was first called back from a UK trip to file his nominations for the Rajya Sabha in February but at the last moment, the nomination was given to another SC leader, Shahsher Singh Dullo.
This had sparked off internal squabbling within Congress's SC leaders as Hans belongs to the Valmiki-Mazhabi community while Dullo comes from the Ravidassia- Adi-Dharmi community. Hans had then told TOI that Adi-Dharmi leaders in Congress had ganged up against him.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the badshah of fakirs and the fakir in me has followed him," Hans said. "When he came to campaign for me in 2009 (he was contesting from Jalandhar) he mentioned that I had begged with a bowl to help the people of Gujarat after the 2001 earthquake and raised $2.5 million for the victims. Modi ji had not forgotten my contribution."
While leaving SAD, Hans said that politics was not his cup of tea and added that he was trapped into contesting the 2009 election. In the 2014 Parliament election, he had opposed an SAD ticket to Pawan Teenu from Jalandhar (reserve) constituency and then raised the issue of discrimination against his community.