Chandigarh: Within hours after taking oath as the Chief Minister of Punjab, Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday evening took a big decision to send a sportsman to Rajya Sabha to represent the border state.
Promoting sports in Punjab was one of Mann's top poll promises, which the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader aims to fulfill at the earliest possible.
According to sources close to ABP News, AAP is most likely to send former cricketer Harbhajan Singh to Rajya Sabha in the biennial elections from Punjab. Mann is said to have close relations with Harbhajan and the latter even wished him for sweeping Punjab Assembly Elections lately.
Reports also suggest that Mann can also give command of Jalandhar Sport University to Harbhajan. Before the Punjab elections, CM Bhagwant Mann had promised to set up a sports university in Jalandhar.
Soon after swearing in as the new CM of Punjab, dethroning the Congress, Mann said that work will start from today itself.
"We will not waste even a single day. We are already late by 70 years," he during his oath-taking ceremony which was thronged by tens of thousands of people in freedom fighter Bhagat Singh's village.
Mann was the only one to take the oath at the event where many people in the crowd and on the dais, sported turbans and 'dupattas' in yellow - the Basanti colour often associated with Bhagat Singh.
According to reports, other members of the cabinet will be sworn in later as the AAP seeks to fulfil the massive mandate it got in the Punjab Assembly polls.
The party, which is now in power in a second state after Delhi, won 92 of the 117 seats in Punjab, decimating ruling Congress, SAD alliance and the combine of Amarinder Singh's Lok Congress Party and the BJP.
Mann has been a Lok Sabha MP twice from Sangrur. The 2022 Punjab polls marked his assembly election debut. The Punjab AAP president won from Dhuri, an assembly segment in Sangrur parliamentary constituency, by a margin of 58,000 votes.