The Congress Friday late announced former minister and Punjab Congress’s working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu ,54, as its candidate for the upcoming Ludhiana West bypoll. He is a two-time former MLA from this seat.
His candidature was approved by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, according to a press release issued by the All India Congress Committee (AICC).
The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has already announced its Rajya Sabha member cum industrialist Sanjeev Arora as candidate for the by-poll.
Ashu is among the few prominent Hindu faces of the Congress in Punjab.
Recently, Ashu had met senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and said that “winds of real change will blow from Ludhiana West and will storm across Punjab by 2027” and “AAP rout will begin from Ludhiana.”
The bypoll to Ludhiana West, an urban constituency dominated by business and trade community, was necessitated after the demise of AAP MLA Gurpreet Gogi who died in January this year due to a self-inflicted gunshot injury in head. Gogi, a first-time MLA, had defeated Ashu in 2022 Punjab assembly elections by over 7,000 votes.
Ashu had won from Ludhiana West in 2012 and 2017 consecutively, and remained food and civil supplies minister during the previous Congress government.
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Ashu was elevated as Punjab Congress’s working president in April 2022 after the party suffered loss in the state assembly elections and AAP stormed to power.
After AAP came to power in 2022, Ashu was arrested by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau in August 2022 in the alleged multi-crore foodgrain transportation scam. He remained in jail for nearly seven months before getting bail from the High Court in March 2023. Later, he was also arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in August 2024 for alleged money laundering related to the same case and was again bailed out in December 2024. In the same month, the HC also quashed the FIRs registered against him by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau calling it a “pure vendetta.”
Considered extremely close to Rahul Gandhi with his name often finding mention in the latter’s speeches, Ashu was included in Punjab cabinet as food and civil supplies minister during the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government in 2018. Later, he was among the few ministers who was retained in the cabinet of former CM Charanjit Singh Channi, who took the charge after the ouster of Amarinder Singh.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, however, the party preferred to bet on Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, not Ashu, as candidate from Ludhiana after then sitting Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu shifted to the BJP. Warring won from Ludhiana.
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Better known as “Pandit ji” in Ludhiana West, an urban constituency with Hindu and Sikh voters, Ashu began his political career as a Congress councilor from Ludhiana in 1997. A three-time councilor (1997, 2002 and 2007) and two-time MLA (2012 and 2017), he belongs to a business family that owns dairy farms.
Ashu grew close to Rahul Gandhi after getting in touch with senior Congress leader Kishori Lal and was eventually given a ticket from Ludhiana West in 2012. Ashu won defeating BJP candidate Rajinder Bhandari, despite the SAD-BJP combine managing to sweep to power in Punjab.
His wife Mamta Ashu is also a local councillor and remained active in the constituency when Ashu was imprisoned recently.
