‘Our time has come,’ says Punjab BJP with Sunil Jakhar by its side and others at the door

Last week during his visit to the city, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had told partymen, “BJP is a big party in Punjab. Hindu-Sikh ekta ke liye ham chhoti party ban ke rahein hain, ab ussi goal ke liye ham badi party ban kar aayenge. Yeh ab samey ki maang hai (It’s for the sake of Hindu-Sikh unity that we remained a bit player, now we will become a big party for the same goal).” With leaders like former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar, whose family ties with the Congress go back 50 years, joining its ranks last month, the party has a lot to crow about.

The border state of Punjab has for long been eluding BJP, which remained a junior ally of the SAD(B) for 23 years — it used to contest only 23 out of the 117 seats — before the alliance broke up in 2020 on the issue of the three farm laws. In the recent Assembly elections, its first as the lead party with two smaller allies, BJP won just two seats with 7 per cent vote share as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the state.

But the continuing influx of leaders — four former Congress ministers, Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Sunder Sham Arora and Gurpreet Singh Kangar, joined the BJP last Saturday – has given wings to the party. It’s for the first time in its history that the BJP has fielded a candidate, former Congress MLA Kewal Dhillon, from the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat, which goes to the polls on June 23.

State Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring calls the continuing outflow of partymen a “betrayal” that smacks of “rank opportunism’’. Former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who had left the Congress to form Punjab Lok Congress after being unseated as the CM, calls the string of exits from the Congress a “tip of the iceberg”, fueling speculation about his hand in the movement.

Underlining the strong ideological moorings of the party, senior leader K N Govindacharya had once said BJP workers have “alag chaal, charitra and chehra”. Old-timers fear the new entrants could dilute these three.

Subhash Sharma, however, likened leaders from other parties to rivers and rivulets that subsume themselves in the Ganga that’s the BJP.

“The Congress is like a river whose source has dried up. Its leaders see no future for themselves in the party. It’s only natural for them to join us and adopt our ideology.’’

It’s not just the Congress. Two Akali leaders, former Bathinda MLA Sarup Chand Singla and three-time MLA from Sham Chaurasi Mohinder Kaur Josh, also joined the party last week.

Sharma, who foresees more such movements in the coming months, has high hopes from the Sangrur bypolls. “I don’t know about votes, but we are getting tremendous response from villages. So many sarpanches and zila samiti members, mostly Jat Sikhs, are joining us. They are finally waking up to the reality that we are everyone’s party, and not just that of the Hindus, and that we mean well for the state. It’s a big shift.’’

Senior Punjab Congress leaders before joining BJP in Chandigarh. (Express photo by Kamleshwar Singh)

The party is also chipping away at civic bodies. Last week, former Congress minister Balbir Sidhu joined the BJP along with his brother Amarjit Singh Sidhu, mayor of the Mohali municipal corporation.

The party’s charm offensive is being supported by leaders like Union ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, party in-charge for the state, and Hardeep Puri. The former was among the first national leaders to reach Moosa village to condole the death of popular singer Sidhu Moosewala last week.

The BJP’s outreach in Punjab started last year, much before the elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to repeal the farm laws on Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary. Later in December, he announced that December 26 would be observed as Vir Bal Diwas to commemorate the sacrifices of the three young sons of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh master, which got him accolades from none other than Baba Harnam Singh Dhumma, chief of the Sikh seminary Damdami Taksal.

The PM has also been hosting tea parties for people from various walks of life in Punjab to “remove misconceptions” about the party.

Sunil Jakhar, while defending his decision to join the party last month, had cited the PM’s address to the nation from the Red Fort on the 401st birth anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, in April. “It was a landmark step that moved even his staunchest critics and revealed that he regarded the state as special,” Jakhar had said.