Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has dropped Punjab agriculture minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian from its list of candidates for the 2027 Assembly elections, replacing him with his nephew, Randhir Singh, alias Dheera Khudian, from the Lambi constituency.
Khudian, who won Lambi during the AAP wave in the 2022 Assembly elections, has been denied a ticket in the party’s second list. Randhir Singh is his nephew.
The decision to drop Khudian is being linked to an alleged altercation between him and Manish Sisodia, the party’s Punjab affairs in-charge, in May 2026.
Following the reported dispute, Khudian’s nephew Randhir Singh was appointed chairman of the Punjab State Container Warehousing Corporation in June 2026. The appointment was viewed in political circles as being connected to differences between Gurmeet Khudian and the party high command.
Political observers had since been speculating that Khudian’s political prospects in the Lambi constituency were diminishing.
Khudian defeated Parkash Singh Badal in 2022
In the 2022 Assembly elections, Gurmeet Khudian, contesting on an AAP ticket, defeated five-time former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal in Lambi by a margin of 11,396 votes.
Khudian secured 66,313 votes, accounting for 48.87% of the total votes polled in the constituency.
However, just two years later, he suffered defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Bathinda, where Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal defeated him.
