A diplomat’s debut: In tough Amritsar seat for BJP, ex-US Ambassador treads moderate line, talks development

Sandhu and Dhaliwal are both candidates, for the BJP and AAP, respectively, for the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat, which votes only a month-and-a-half from now, on June 1, along with the rest of the state. However, campaigning has begun in right earnest in the constituency, with Sandhu making his political debut and Dhaliwal seeking to put behind his 2019 electoral rout from the seat. Dhaliwal incidentally has his own link to the Indian diaspora in the Americas, as the Punjab government’s Minister for NRI Affairs.

The hug came just a day after Dhaliwal launched a scathing attack against Sandhu over the Y-category security provided to him by the Union government, purportedly on account of farmer protests against BJP candidates across Punjab. Sandhu too has already faced such protests.

Dhaliwal also questioned Sandhu’s ideological choices, in contrast to his family heritage.

The grandson of Teja Singh Samundari, known in Punjab for his role in the gurdwara reform movement as a Sikh leader, and in the freedom movement as a Congress leader, who just recently joined the BJP, 61-year-old Sandhu seems focused for now on avoiding a war of words. Yet another diplomat pitched into the poll fray by the BJP, he is getting to know party leaders and workers in Amritsar, and trying to cover the ground in the constituency.

He admits to having contracted a throat infection in the first few days of the campaign, but doesn’t agree with those who accuse him of being inexperienced in politics. “I did public service as a bureaucrat, and I consider politics an extension of that,” he says.

It is the BJP’s third attempt to send a high-profile figure to Parliament from Amritsar, after former finance minister Arun Jaitley and Union minister Hardeep Puri, who was also a diplomat once. Both Jaitley and Puri lost, despite the Modi waves, in 2014 and 2019. While Jaitley was later inducted into Parliament via the Rajya Sabha, Puri was already an Upper House MP when he contested in 2019.

The last time the BJP won from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat was in 2009, when its candidate was ex-cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, now with the Congress.

After the Eid meeting, Sandhu headed to a hotel for a closed-door meeting with around 40 of the BJP’s rural mandal-level leaders and workers. With tea cups in their hands and guns hanging on their shoulders, Sandhu’s Y-category security kept a close watch. Later, Sandhu rushed for a second closed-door meeting with urban leaders and workers at the BJP office near the Durgiana Temple.

That the diplomat trappings of the former Ambassador — who was posted in the US from February 2020 to January 31, 2024 — have continued is evident. Sandhu has staff that books his appointments in advance, and it is difficult for anyone to penetrate his chalked-out schedule. However, he has been trying to change that, pointing out that these days there is hardly a gap in his packed daily campaign events. With his wife Reenat, the Indian Ambassador to the Netherlands, unable to join him on the campaign, Sandhu is being supported by his nephew and nieces.

Sandhu says it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who inspired him to join politics. “Once it was suggested to me, I decided to do it. I will be honest, I am still to find out if I made the correct decision or not.”

Incidentally, Sandhu is a school mate of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal from Sanawar. The BJP is contesting its first Lok Sabha election without the support of the SAD in a very long time but, Sandhu says, that hasn’t hurt his personal relationship with Badal.

Acknowledging that this has, however, made his task more difficult, Sandhu says: “There is no doubt that challenges are there. But opportunities also come out of challenges. I feel that the people of Amritsar are hungry for development, and I have experience that can help bring development agenda into focus.” In the last public meeting of the day at Civil Line Halka North, he concentrates on promises along these lines.

What about his views on the Congress and its government’s role in Operation Blue Star? Pointing out that he was studying in Delhi during the 1984 events, including the anti-Sikh riots, he says that while Amritsar still remembers Operation Blue Star, “People of Amritsar have elected Congress MPs. They have elected Congress governments. I think the people of Amritsar have shown a much broader vision. And therefore, I see no reason why anybody should object to me joining the BJP, which is a development-oriented party. I worked for 10 years with PM Narendra Modi. I would like to use those contacts for the development of Amritsar.”

On criticism by the SAD that he had joined the BJP in contravention of the politics of his grandfather, Sandhu says: “The Congress and Akalis were together in the freedom movement. My grandfather was part of the freedom movement and the gurdwara reform movement. The Akali Dal and BJP were together until recently. You are aware of what (Parkash Singh Badal) said about the SAD-BJP relationship. Many of the SAD and BJP leaders were ministers together in the alliance governments of the SAD and BJP. I have nothing more to say.”

On allegations that the BJP has been on a path of confrontation with Sikhs after the farmer agitation of 2020, he said, “Your assessment has a lot of conjecture. And those conjectures are not correct. The BJP is not an anti-Sikh party. I have worked with PM Modi for 10 years. I know the number of blacklists (naming people allegedly associated with Khalistan) that were removed by him compared to earlier times, the number of other initiatives for the Sikhs. On investments and farmers, I am confident that PM Modi will give a special package for Amritsar. My focus is on the development of Amritsar.”