NNWN/11/03/2022

Social activist and Aam Aadmi Party candidate Jeevan Jyot Kaur has become a political star overnight. Fifty year old social activist  who contested elections for the first time from Amrtisar East, defeated political heavyweights like Punjab Congress President (and sitting Amritsar East MLA) Navjot Singh Sidhu, Shiromani Akali Dal’s Bikram Singh Majithia (who is SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal’s brother-in-law) and former IAS officer and BJP candidate Jagmohan Singh Raju.

She won the seat with 39,520 votes, while Sidhu got 32,807 votes and Majithia got 25,112 votes. Raju got 7,255 votes. Kaur who had no experience in politics, has spent her life working for the welfare of society. Popularly known as the ‘pad woman’ of Amritsar, She has been running a programme under which women inmates were provided with eco-friendly sanitary napkins in jails across Punjab. The project — titled ‘EcoShe’ — was a collaboration between a Swiss company and the Kaur-chaired Sri Hemkunt Education (SHE).

Under SHE, she run a school for the underprivileged and also worked to “develop sustainable and self-reliant communities”. Kaur has also adopted a slum in Jalandhar under ‘Mission Abad’ and ran a rehabilitation programme for poor and slum dwellers.  She joined AAP in March 2016. she was the only woman volunteer for the the AAP in Amritsar’s Majitha region at the time of 2017 assembly elections. After the elections, she was appointed co-president for the party’s women’s wing. Kaur has been also been the spokesperson for AAP Punjab.

She targeted Sidhu for alleged “ill-treatment” of his mother and claimed that Majithia, who has been accused in a drugs case, had an uncertain future.