Dark horse CM candidate HS Phoolka toils silently
2016-10-12 News,
LUDHIANA: Mein Sikh Kaum Da Fauji Haan (I am a soldier of the Sikh community), the veteran 1984 anti-Sikh riots lawyer, says to people at a meeting in village Dhatt near ludhiana. It is his fourth village visit of the day in his constituency, Wearing the traditional light-blue turban, a kurta-set and his white beard flowing, in departure from his look in Delhi’s courts where he has toiled for three decades to fight Sikh riot cases, Phoolka is seen as a proverbial dark horse for the CM face choice in Punjab for the aam aadmi party.. “I have absolutely no aspirations, no greed at all. I have never thought about it (CM post). People come and tell me so, but I tell them not to speak such things and focus on removing Badals,” Phoolka tells ET, when asked if he and Bhagwant Mann are front-runners for being projected as CM face. He is widely seen as the ‘sober’, educated and the most senior Jat Sikh face in Punjab for the Aap. 60-year-old Phoolka lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls narrowly from Ludhiana but he was in the first list of candidates declared by AAP in August to contest from an assembly seat in Ludhiana’s outskirts, Dakha. He impresses upon villagers that “I am a village boy like you” who went to a school in Bhadaur village near Barnala, graduated from Ludhiana, did law from Chandigarh and started fighting Sikh riot cases in Delhi when he was just 28. “My first duty was to punish who massacred Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 — Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler. Now my duty is to punish the Badals who have destroyed my state and ran it like a private limited company,” Phoolka tells villagers. Many thought Phoolka may have squandered his CM face chances when he resigned from all AAP posts last September, saying he wanted to focus on fighting the riot cases. “There was lot of pressure from Punjab and also the party that I should be active again...I have now left my flourishing private practice completely and am devoted to Punjab,” Phoolka told ET. “Both the riot cases against Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler - for which primarily I left all posts - are also back on track since last December. I am now going to Delhi only for the riot cases or child rights cases. I only go for the hearing and come back to Punjab for campaigning,” he says. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/dark-horse-cm-candidate-hs-phoolka-toils-silently/articleshow/54820436.cms