Gogia as Mayor: Bahawalpur community gets its due after 78 years of brotherhood in Patiala
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ January 10,2025
Today Kundan Gogia has been elected as the first citizen of Patiala. He becomes the seventh mayor of Royal City Patiala. The first elected mayor of Patiala was Vishnu Sharma in 2002. After Sharma, Ajitpal Singh Kohli, Jaspal Singh Pardhan, Jagdish Rai Chaudhary (acting), Amarinder Singh Bazaz and Sanjeev Sharma Bittu remained first citizen of Patiala.
Kundan Gogia belonged to Bahawalpur community which has around 60K votes in Patiala (urban and rural constituencies) and around 2.50 lakhs in Patiala district.
This is the first time after Independence that their (Bahawalpur) Community has got any high public post in Patiala. Besides Gogia, the only other Bahawalpur leader who reached at some prominent elected position is late Raj Khurana , the first MLA from the community. A three-time MLA, Khurana represented Rajpura assembly constituency in Punjab Vidhan Sabha and remained minister in Punjab.
The richest princely state in the region, pre-Partition Bahawalpur (in Pakistan) was spread over 45,000 sq km, its border touching Rajasthan and Punjab; Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalnagar were the two district headquarters. It had a population of 20 lakh. Of these, 83 per cent were Muslims, 13 per cent Hindus and the rest Sikhs and Christians among the minorities. Inhabiting urban areas, the Hindus, mostly traders and shopkeepers, were considered prosperous. Most Sikhs were based in villages.
As per reports, after partition Bahawalpuris scattered across the country — Delhi, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Dhulia, Kalyan and Thane in Maharashtra, Surat in Gujarat (where many shifted before Partition and are in garment business), Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan, as also several places in Punjab, including Tripuri (in Patiala), Bassi Pathana , Samana, Abohar, Fazilka and Amritsar, and Sonepat, Kurukshetra and Karnal in Haryana.
Once Capt Amarinder Singh, former chief minister of Punjab and son of erstwhile Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh had said in an interview on the arrival, settlement of Bahawalpuris in Patiala’s Tripuri and Rajpura area that “ Nawab of Bahawalpur was constantly in touch with the Maharaja of Patiala during partition days. The Nawab asked him if his people could settle in his lands. “My father and the Bahawalpur Nawab were very close. The two decided that the Bahawalpuris would come here and the Muslims from Patiala would go to Bahawalpur. They would be escorted by our armed guards till the border, where after the Bahawalpur guards took them to safety and vice-versa.”
After this gesture of Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh they (Bahawalpuris) remained loyal to the royal family.
Gogia as Mayor: Bahawalpur community gets its due after 78 years of brotherhood in Patiala. They worked delicately for the development of Patiala, Rajpura and wherever they are living.
