Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is likely to announce its first candidate for the 2017 elections at a workers’ rally at Chabbewal in Hoshiarpur district Saturday. While other parties have begun preparations for the Assembly elections, none has come close to deciding on candidates.

Sources in the BSP said that former BSP state president Gurlal Saila would be announced as the party candidate from Chabbewal Vidhan sabha segment. Saila was appointed state BSP president when the then state BSP president Karimpuri had resigned from his post on moral grounds following the party’s disastrous performance in the 2012 Assembly elections. Saila had contested from Garhshankar constituency in Hoshiarpur. He had managed to dent the Congress votebank badly but had lost to SAD candidate.

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He had held the posts of district coordinator, state general secretary, and in-charge of Lok Sabha seat Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar before his elevation as state president.

When contacted, state BSP president Avtar Singh Karimpuri, who was again appointed state president in 2014, confirmed that BSP would announce its first candidate for 2017 from Chabewal in tomorrow’s rally.

The BSP, which had a strong presence in Doaba region of the state and had fetched good vote share in the past, has been giving a bad performance in all the elections, including Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha in the past several years.

The party, which once had four MPs in Punjab, including BSP founder Kanshi Ram, had witnessed around 15 per cent slide in vote share since 1992 till the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2014 elections, the two candidates of the party from Doaba region, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur, have had to forfeit their security. In Punjab, too, its vote share slipped to just 1.9 per cent in 2014 elections against 16.32 per cent in 1992 elections (when SAD had boycotted the elections).