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BJP taps Modi aide Chandrakant Patil to lead Punjab poll preparations
The party plans to contest all 117 Assembly seats independently in 2027, despite calls within its Punjab unit to revive its alliance with the SAD.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has appointed Union jal shakti minister Chandrakant Raghunath Patil, a trusted aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as its election in-charge for Punjab.
Though the party is yet to formally announce Patil’s appointment, the Union minister has hit the ground running, holding at least five meetings on poll preparations in the state, party leaders privy to the matter said.
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BJP looks to strengthen its social media strategy
“Patil has been involved in poll strategy since August, and his trusted teams are already in the state to conduct surveys, streamline the BJP’s media and social media strategies, and zero in on potential candidates. It was after his intervention at a meeting that the Rajya Sabha member Sandeep Pathak, who switched from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to the BJP in April this year, was entrusted with the task of bolstering the party’s social media presence,” the senior leader said, requesting anonymity.
Pathak was a key member of the AAP team that handled the party’s 2022 Punjab assembly election campaign, in which it swept the polls, forming a government with 92 of the 117 seats.
Over the past several months, the BJP has consistently maintained that it will contest all 117 assembly seats on its own, despite pressure from several leaders within the Punjab unit who are pushing to revive the alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the party’s oldest ally, ahead of the high-stakes 2027 assembly elections.
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The BJP and SAD alliance, which ended in 2020 over the Centre’s now-repealed three farm laws, had formed governments together in Punjab in 1997, 2007 and 2012. Both parties performed poorly in the two elections they contested separately. In the 2022 assembly polls, their first electoral contest separately in more than two decades, the SAD won only three of the 117 seats — its worst-ever performance — while the BJP managed just two. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the SAD won only one of Punjab’s 13 seats, while the BJP failed to win a seat.
“The first meeting attended by Patil was chaired by BJP national president Nitin Nabin on October 13. The meeting, held virtually, reviewed organisational expansion from booth to district level. The second meeting was hosted by Patil at his official residence in Delhi. Punjab in-charge Satish Poonia, co-in-charges Virendra Sachdeva and Alka Gurjar, state president Kewal Singh Dhillon, former presidents Sunil Jakhar and Ashwani Sharma, and the party’s national vice-president Manpreet Singh Badal attended it,” the leader added.
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A proven poll manager
In political circles, Patil is known for helping the saffron party deliver results in challenging states.
Patil, a former president of the Gujarat BJP, is known for his strong micromanagement and organisational skills, which could prove handy for the BJP in Punjab, where the party is trying to expand its footprint.
He was Gujarat BJP president when the party won a record 156 of the 182 seats, its best performance since the formation of the state. A four-time Lok Sabha MP from Gujarat’s Navsari, Patil won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with a victory margin of 6.89 lakh votes, the highest in the country that year.
He has also been involved in election management and planning in PM Modi’s Lok Sabha segment of Varanasi. Most recently, he was co-in-charge for the 2025 Bihar elections, when the NDA swept the state.
