Already at daggers drawn with his party’s candidate from Sultanpur Lodhi. Navtej Singh Cheema, senior Congress leader and Punjab’s Technical Education Minister Rana Gurjeet Singh on Sunday urged the party president Sonia Gandhi to expel Sukhpal Singh Khaira, former MLA and party nominee from Bholath, from the Congress party for his alleged involvement in ‘drug money’ laundering.

Rana Gurjit, in a letter to Sonia Gandhi, said: “He (Khaira) is currently in jail in connection with the money laundering case. It is not the routine money laundering case of unaccounted wealth or money. It relates to drug money. The money in question has been made through drugs, which is unacceptable and indefensible.”

“The Congress party has always been against drugs. In fact, it was our worthy former president Rahul Gandhi who had flagged the issue in 2015, while referring to the serious problem of drugs in Punjab,” he said in the letter while raising a question, “how can our party give ticket to someone who is tainted by drug charges or to any of his family members?”

“It will be difficult for the Congress leaders and contestants to defend the indefensible that on the one hand, we have sworn that we will eliminate drugs; and on the other hand, we are giving a party ticket to a tainted person who is in jail accused of money laundering which he accumulated from drugs”, he said.

Rana Gurjit said: “This was high time that the Congress party should take a stand on the issue of drugs and someone who is tainted and is in jail for the same charges should not get the party ticket.”

Also claiming that Khaira “is not winning”, he said that allotting the party ticket to him or any of his family members will not only send a wrong signal, but will also mean wasting a precious constituency during a crucial election.

The senior party leader claimed that as a loyal and humble Congressman, who has served in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha for the last two decades projecting and defending the Congress policies, principles and ideals, “I could not turn a blind eye to what is happening in my party and that too just next to my own assembly constituency”.

Notably, Rana Gurjit and Khaira have been at loggerhead since long. It was after Khiara’s revelations that Rana Gurjit had to step down from the Capt Amarinder Singh led Cabinet for his alleged involvement in illegal sand mining. Khaira was then the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) MLA. He returned to the Congress the previous year.

Also, Khaira was among the Congress party leaders who had written against Rana Gurjit to the Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu when he was to be re-inducted in the Cabinet, reconstituted by Charanjit Sing Channi after Capt Amarinder’s ouster.

Currently, Rana Gurjit is facing heat from his own partymen for supporting his son, Rana Inder Pratap Singh, for contesting as an independent from Sultanpur Lodhi segment against the Congress nominee and sitting MLA Navtej Singh Cheema. Cheema and Khaira, along with two more MLAs, had also written to the party high command seeking Rana Gurjit’s expulsion from the party.