‘Kadey v Nhi’: Diljit Dosanjh shuts down appeal by retired IAS officers, defence personnel asking him to lead Punjab
In its appeal to Diljit Dosanjh, the think tank identified four crises consuming Punjab, including fiscal architecture and communal polarisation.
Diljit Dosanjh was recently embroiled in a controversy when pro-Khalistani organisations displayed banners targeting him at one of his concerts abroad. (File Photo) A think tank of retired IAS officers, defence personnel, and professionals in Punjab on Saturday issued a public appeal to singer-actor Diljit Dosanjh to take over the leadership of the state, “brought to its knees by successive dispensations”. Dosanjh, however, declined the offer, saying “Kadey v Nhi.. (never)”.
In a full-page newspaper advertisement addressed directly to Dosanjh, Chandigarh-based Jago Punjab Manch stated that Punjab did not need another politician, but needed a citizen of consequence. “This letter is not flattery. It is a reckoning,” the appeal stated, invoking the failures of successive governments, the silence of those who should have spoken, and what it called the possibility that one man of unimpeachable reach could change the course of a people’s destiny.
Dosanjh reacted to the appeal on X on Saturday, saying, “Kadey v Nhi.. (Never) Mera Kam Entertainment Karna (My job is to entertain.) Am Very Happy in My Field. Thank You So Much.”
Though appeals to film stars to enter politics are not uncommon in India, a signed full-page public appeal from a group of retired officers to a singer asking him to lead a state has no precedent in Punjab.
The signatories include retired IAS officer S S Boparai, retired brigadiers M S Dullat, Harwant Singh and Inder Mohan Singh, retired colonels Avtar Singh Hira, Malwinder S Guron, Gurbir S Sandhu and Iqbal Singh, and others.
The letter identified four crises consuming the state. Punjab’s fiscal architecture, it said, is in ruins, pointing out that the state carries one of the heaviest sub-national debt burdens in the country, with governance reduced to populist announcements and negligible returns in health, infrastructure or human capital.
It added that social institutions, from public hospitals to government schools, are being quietly hollowed out. Communal polarisation, it warned, was deliberately being injected into Punjab’s political bloodstream at a moment when the state, given its border location and the living memory of Partition, could least afford it. It also highlighted the migration crisis, saying every young Punjabi was boarding a flight to Canada, Australia, or the United Kingdom.
‘Diljit Dosanjh has a credibility that has not been purchased’
The appeal comes weeks after Dosanjh found himself at the centre of a charged controversy when pro-Khalistani organisations displayed banners targeting him at one of his concerts abroad, accusing him of being insufficiently committed to the Khalistan cause. Dosanjh told his audience that everything he does, he does for Punjab, not for any ideology, not for any organisation, not for any geography beyond the land that made him.
The letter pointed to his access to the Punjabi diaspora worldwide, and his authenticity, citing his “solidarity with farmers during the agitation when it was neither fashionable nor without professional consequence.” It also says, “Dosanjh has a credibility that has not been purchased, a discipline that has been lived and not constructed.”
Punjab heads to polls in early 2027. The Manch did not ask Dosanjh to join any political party or contest any election, but invoked Nepal and Tamil Nadu as models where change came from people and movements that the conventional political calculus had not accounted for.
“Punjab’s moment is now,” the letter stated. “And they are willing to stand, once more, for something larger than themselves.”
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