Kalia to head BJP in Assembly

Senior BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia was on Wednesday elected leader of the party’s legislative wing in Punjab.

The election of Kalia, a former president of the Punjab unit of the BJP, as leader of the BJP legislature party came at a meeting here which was attended among others by BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley and party vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu. The newly won MLAs unanimously elected Kalia as their leader, Naidu said.

Kalia, who had been a Cabinet minister in the previous Prakash Singh Badal government, defeated Congress candidate Tejinder Singh Bittu.