The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday released its list of eight candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Punjab.

The list includes six Cabinet ministers in the Punjab government.

Minister of NRI Affairs Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal will contest from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat; Minister of Transport Laljit Singh Bhullar from Khadoor Sahib; Minister of Agriculture Gurmeet Singh Khudian from Bathinda; Minister of Sports and Youth Services Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer from Sangrur and Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr. Balbir Singh from Patiala.

MP Sushil Kumar Rinku, who represents the Jalandhar constituency, will contest from the same seat.

Former Congress MLA Gurpreet Singh GP, who has represented the Bassi Pathana Assembly constituency, has been named as the Aam Aadmi Party’s Lok Sabha candidate from the Fatehgarh Sahib seat.

Punjab has a total of 13 Lok Sabha seats.

In the 2019 general election, the Congress won eight seats in Punjab while the Aam Aadmi Party won just one. The Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat was won by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

However, in the 2021 Punjab Assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party bagged 92 of the state’s 117 Assembly seats. The Congress, which was in power in the state, won 18 seats.

While the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress are opponents in Punjab, they are constituents of the INDIA bloc, an alliance of Opposition parties that hopes to take on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha elections.

In Delhi, the two parties have entered into a seat-sharing agreement as per which the Aam Aadmi Party will contest four seats and Congress three.