Manish Tewari says "not surprised" on exclusion from campaigners list

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Congress MP Manish Tewari has broken his silence on being excluded from the party's star campaigners list for Punjab polls. Tewari, a sitting MP from Anandpur Sahib took to Twitter after he and other prominent members of the G-23 didn't find space in the campaign list.

“I would have been pleasantly surprised if it would have been the other way around. The reasons are also no state secret,” Tewari tweeted. The Congress MP was responding to the news report on the absence of prominent Congress leaders from the star campaigner list and also to former TMC MP Abhijit Mukherjee.

Mukherjee said in a tweet, "Sad state of affairs in Punjab Congress as they exclude a prominent senior congress leader, MP from Punjab and former minister Manish Tewari Ji from the list of star campaigners in poll-bound Punjab! Such narrow-minded steps will never help Congress to win elections!"

Earlier on Friday, Congress released the list of star campaigners for the upcoming Punjab Assembly elections and the names of prominent G-23 leaders of the Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad and Manish Tewari were missing.

Also, barring Ambika Soni and Pratap Singh Bajwa from Punjab, many party MPs have not got a place in it. Former speaker of Lok Sabha Meira Kumar is included in lieu of the Dalit vote bank. At the same time, the name of Delhi Mahila Congress President Amrita Dhawan is also surprising.

Along with this, four big names of Haryana, Bhupinder Hooda, Randeep Surjewala, Deepender Hooda, and Kumari Selja have been given place.

But Tewari's exclusion has added more fuel to the fire. There are around 40 per cent Hindus in the state. Earlier, another Hindu face of the party, Sunil Jakhar, had expressed the pain of not being made the Chief Minister despite having the support of 42 MLAs, during change of guard after Captain Amarinder Singh stepped down in September last year, claiming that it was because he is a Hindu. However, Jakhar has been given a place in the list of star campaigners for Punjab polls. Punjab will go to the polls on February 20. The counting of votes will take place on March 10.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)