Punjab Chief Minister-elect Bhagwant Mann announced that his oath-taking ceremony will be held at Khatkarkalan in Nawanshahr district, the ancestral village of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.
He also announced that government offices will not have the photo of the Chief Minister as is the custom.
“The oath-taking ceremony will not be held at Raj Bhawan, but at Khatkarkalan. The date will be announced later,” he said in his victory speech in Dhuri, where he won by over 58,000 votes.
“No government office will carry a picture of Chief Minister, instead there will be pictures of Bhagat Singh and BR Ambedkar,” Mr Mann announced.
Underlining the scale of the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory by naming the heavyweights who have lost, the AAP leader said, “Bade (Parkash Singh) Badal Sahib has lost, Sukhbir (Badal) has lost from Jalalabad, Captain has lost from Patiala, Sidhu and Majithia are also losing, (Charanjit Singh) Channi has lost on both the seats.”
Mr Mann said his first order of business after taking office will be schools, health, industry, making agriculture profitable, the safety of women and improving sports infrastructure.
“You will start seeing the change in Punjab within one month,” he promised.
Appealing to people to work together, he said those who did not vote for the AAP need not worry as the government will work for all sections of the society.
The February 20 elections in Punjab proved their Waterloo for the majority of the big guns, including chief ministerial candidates of Congress and Shiromani Akali, as they were routed by AAP nominees. They included 94-year-old Akali patron and five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, who until this election had the distinction of not losing any poll. He lost to Gurmeet Singh Khudian of AAP from Lambi by a margin of 11,396 votes. Such was the scale of AAP wave that SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal also lost badly from his bastion of Jalalabad to AAP candidate Jagdeep Kamboj by 30,930 votes.
