BJP’s 4,000 km anti-drug yatra to end with Amit Shah’s Jalandhar show tomorrow

The four legs of the yatra were flagged off from different parts of Punjab. The first began from Madhopur in Pathankot on September 18 and was flagged off by BJP national president Nitin Nabin. The second was flagged off from Fatehgarh Sahib by Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on September 19, while Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal flagged off the third from Fazilka on September 20. The fourth leg began from Talwandi Sabo on September 21 after being flagged off by Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Protests and questions over crowd size

During the initial days, the yatra witnessed protests along its routes. BJP leaders described those protesting as AAP workers, while AAP leaders maintained that the protests were spontaneous reactions from members of the public who were showing black flags to the yatra. Videos of the protests were subsequently shared on AAP’s social media platforms.

The protests largely subsided after September 22, but the BJP subsequently faced questions over gatherings at several rural and semi-urban locations. On September 25, visuals from Sangrur and Dhuri showed relatively small gatherings during the yatra. Dhuri is the Assembly constituency of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. In Malerkotla, a Muslim-majority area, the vehicle carrying BJP leaders was seen moving through the market with limited participation before some vehicles joined later. Similar scenes were reported from parts of Samrala in Ludhiana district.

The BJP appeared to have greater difficulty mobilising crowds in some rural areas and AAP strongholds, while its programmes in urban and semi-urban areas attracted more people, particularly when the yatra passed through markets or reached designated rally points.

AAP vs BJP in Ferozepur

AAP spokesperson Neel Garg also targeted the BJP over an event in Ferozepur on Sunday, claiming that a dispute over chairs was followed by cancellation of the programme and Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma returning from the helipad. He also posted pictures of empty chairs, mocking the BJP.

BJP leader Heera Sodhi, who organised the Ferozepur programme, rejected the allegations. He said Sharma arrived around 3.30 pm after an earlier programme, which had begun around 1 pm, had already concluded. He said the Rajasthan CM subsequently attended a second programme and there had been no cancellation or dispute over chairs.

“It is all false information being spread by AAP,” Sodhi said, alleging that AAP was concerned about the BJP making inroads into rural areas.

BJP hails ‘huge response’

State BJP general secretary Anil Sarin said the party had received a “huge response” at most locations and argued that the objective was not to gather thousands of people at every rally. The four yatras, he said, covered nearly 4,000 km and collectively held more than 300 public programmes in 12 days. According to Sarin, each yatra held a minimum of eight rallies a day, resulting in around 32 programmes daily.

Several senior BJP leaders participated in the campaign. Chief ministers Nayab Singh Saini of Haryana, Pushkar Singh Dhami of Uttarakhand, Rekha Gupta of Delhi and Bhajan Lal Sharma of Rajasthan visited Punjab during the yatra.

Union ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Arjun Ram Meghwal also participated, while Delhi ministers Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Kapil Mishra and Ashish Sood were among other leaders who joined the campaign. BJP MP and actor-politician Manoj Tiwari drew crowds at several locations and also performed ‘Hum Honge Kamyab’ at Fatehgarh Sahib.

Rajya Sabha MPs Harbhajan Singh, Vikramjit Sahney, Satnam Singh, Raghav Chadha, Tarun Chugh, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal and Lok Sabha MP Anurag Thakur from Himachal Pradesh also took part in the campaign.

‘Was junior partner’: BJP hits back

“Drugs are going to be a key issue in the 2027 polls. We may have struggled to get crowds at a few locations, but we reached hundreds of villages where the BJP previously had little or no organisational structure,” BJP spokesperson Pritpal Singh Baliawal said.

The campaign also triggered a political debate over the BJP’s own record on the drug issue. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has repeatedly questioned the BJP’s right to lead an anti-narcotics campaign, saying that drugs entered Punjab during BJP’s alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal from 2007 to 2017

BJP state president Kewal Singh Dhillon defended the party, saying, the BJP was the “junior alliance partner” and did not hold the chief minister or deputy chief minister’s post during that period. He pointed out that the BJP had 19 MLAs in the 2007 government and 12 in 2012.