Jilted at the altar, but will back Modi: Kavita Khanna

The signs of rebellion from Kavita Khanna, the wife of late BJP Lok Sabha member Vinod Khanna, at being ignored for a party ticket to contest the Lok Sabha polls fizzled out on Saturday.

Addressing a press conference here, Kavita said she was approached by the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party after she had voiced her anguish at being “jilted at the altar” as the BJP fielded actor Sunny Deol from Gurdaspur, a Lok Sabha seat represented by her late husband for four terms.

Kavita claimed that she was asked by the BJP to prepare for the elections following which she had mobilised the party cadre for more than a month and had even kept the nomination papers ready.

“There is no denying that I was extremely hurt and upset with the decision. It was the second time that the party was letting me down,” she told reporters here on BJP announcing the candidature of Sunny Deol.

Vinod Khanna had won the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat on 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2014. After his death two years back, the BJP lost the seat to Congress' Sunil Kumar Jakhar in the 2017 bypoll. BJP had fielded Swarn Salaria as its candidate from the seat.

Kavita said in 2017, she was asked to support Salaria and came to know about the decision to field Deol only from the media.

Claiming that she was under “tremendous pressure” to contest the elections as an independent, she had decided to continue her quest to serve the nation by pledging complete support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.