Chandigarh, May 1 (IANS): A day after quitting the Congress, former legislator Dalvir Singh Goldy, who unsuccessfully contested against Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann in the 2022 Assembly polls, joined the AAP on Wednesday.

Goldy, who resigned from the Congress after he expressed his “displeasure” over the denial of a party ticket from the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat, joined the AAP in the presence of CM Mann here.

Welcoming Goldy into the party fold, CM Mann, who won the Dhuri seat with a margin of 58,206 votes in 2002, called him his “younger brother” and a “hardworking youth”.

“I have always believed that youngsters should be allowed to come forward in politics and be the harbingers of change. But Goldy was ignored in the Congress. I am inducting him in the party as my younger brother,” the Chief Minister said.

AAP has fielded Cabinet Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer from the Sangrur parliamentary seat, while the Congress candidate is Sukhpal Khaira, a legislator and AAP rebel.

Responding to Khaira’s allegations that Goldy was under pressure from the Vigilance Bureau to join AAP, CM Mann said, “Khaira has already switched parties so many times and has no business to make such baseless allegations. It is the BJP that used government agencies to settle scores or scare opposition leaders.”

"If there are allegations against Goldy, we would have initiated action and not got him here. There are no allegations against him,” the Chief Minister said, adding, “He was told by party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal that AAP must look for good and promising candidates from other parties, who were feeling ignored, and induct them into AAP”.

In the 2017 Assembly polls, Goldy defeated AAP’s Jasvir Singh Jassi Sekhon by a slender margin of 2,811 votes.

The Dhuri Assembly constituency falls in the Sangrur parliamentary seat that commedia-turned-politician Mann is representing.