‘Seeing debate from inside House is different’: Praveen Khandelwal, BJP’s trader wing face who took on Amazon

“When you watch it on TV, you just get knowledge but not learning. When you watch it from inside the House, you also get learning,” Khandelwal says, adding: “To come to Parliament as a public representative is a big thing. It gives a feeling that we can be successful in doing something for the people.”

Khandelwal, who has been active in the RSS’s student affiliate ABVP and the BJP, was fielded from Delhi’s Chandni Chowk seat against veteran Congress politician Jai Prakash Aggarwal, setting up what was expected to be a closely fought battle. Khandelwal won by almost 90,000 votes, a closer contest than the one-sided win of former Chandni Chowk BJP MP Harsh Vardhan in 2019.

Yet, Khandelwal says he was confident of a victory. “I knew I would win. I have struggled all my life. I have raised the issues of traders across the country. I have resolved their issues and sometimes tried to resolve them. My constituency is mainly trader-dominated. So, I felt that I would win, whoever contests against me.”

On Aggarwal, he says: “After my announcement, the Opposition candidate was announced a month or two later. I knew he was a big leader, but I was confident because I had worked for traders for 30-35 years. So, I was confident that they would support me and they did. I campaigned a lot – I went to 600-700 events in 84 days – and the way people welcomed me, I realised that the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a doer also helped me.”

A Delhi insider, Khandelwal completed his schooling from the Andhra Education Society Senior Higher Secondary School at ITO, and his graduation from Ramjas College, Delhi University (DU). He then went on to study law at DU.

“Since childhood, I have seen my family in politics. My father and uncle were both sent to Tihar jail as political prisoners after the Emergency was imposed (in 1975). I had to join business at this early stage. I joined the ABVP when I was in Ramjas in 1977. For seven to eight years, I was in ABVP. My uncle Satish Khandelwal was both a politician and a businessman,” he says.

Khandelwal adds that he started working for traders from 1985, and in 1990, “under the inspiration of late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji”, founded the Confederation of All-India Traders. “Since then, I have been working among workers. The organisation represents nine crore traders and 48,000 trade associations are affiliated with it.”

In 2008, the BJP fielded him in the Delhi Assembly elections, though he lost. He was later appointed the treasurer of the BJP’s Delhi unit when former governor O P Kohli was the Delhi party president. The recently concluded Lok Sabha election was only Khandelwal’s second foray into electoral politics. He replaced veteran leader and former Union Minister Harsh Vardhan as the BJP candidate from Chandni Chowk.

In 2017, Khandelwal was nominated to the government’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) panel. He has also engaged in campaigns to promote Indian goods and small businesses, including trying to take on Amazon at the height of the pandemic in 2021 and launching an e-commerce platform called Bharat E-Commerce.

Recalling his work among traders, he says, “I found a committed team all over the country by the grace of God. We could create an identity for our association.”

Claiming to have helped modernise trade in India, and open them to the idea of digital payments, he adds: “I have always engaged in constructive struggle in life, and never destructive struggle. It is dialogue that resolves every problem if you have neeyat (intent) to reach the solution, even if you have to take to the streets sometimes. The ultimate solution for everything is dialogue.”

Among his mentors in the BJP in Delhi, he counts O P Kohli, late former Union minister Arun Jaitley, former Rajya Sabha MP and ABVP president Bal Apte and sitting Gautam Buddha Nagar MP Mahesh Sharma.