Chandigarh : Eyeing the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all out to woo Sikhs, particularly Jat Sikhs, accounting for 21% of vote share.
This is evident from the list of office-bearers announced by Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar on Sunday. Over 40% of the new office-bearers in the state BJP unit are Sikhs. Of the 40 office-bearers of the party announced by Jakhar, 17 are Sikhs, including 14 Jat Sikhs.
Of the 12 state vice-presidents announced in the new team, six --Jagdeep Singh Nakai, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Fatehjung Bajwa, Bikram Jit Singh Cheema, Gurpreeet Kangar and Jasmine Sandhawalia are Jat Sikhs, whereas among five general secretaries Jagmohan Singh Raju, Parminder Singh Brar and Dyal Singh Sodhi are also Sikh faces.
Among 12 secretaries, Harjot Kamal, Daman Singh Bajwa and Karanveer Singh Tohra are from Sikh community.
Party’s women wing and other backward classes wing will also be headed by Sikh faces. While former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s daughter Jai Inder Kaur, a Sikh, has been made the women wing chief, former Shiromani Akali Dal leader Amarpal Singh Bonny Ajnala (another Sikh face) has been appointed head of other backward classes wing of the party. The only spokesperson announced in the team --- Col Jaibans Singh --- is also a Sikh.
In the new core committee announced by the party, nine of the 21 office-bearers are Sikhs, including seven Jat Sikhs.
{{/usCountry}}In the new core committee announced by the party, nine of the 21 office-bearers are Sikhs, including seven Jat Sikhs.
{{/usCountry}}Baniya community ‘ignored’
The party has totally ignored its traditional vote bank, the baniya community (also known as the Aggarwal samaj), in the list of its office-bearers. The community dominates the urban pockets of the state, especially in Malwa region.
“The community had been at the forefront in raising the BJP and party’s ideologue Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s flag even during the terrorism era. It’s hard to digest that not a single person from the community has been included in the list,” a former general secretary of the party, who comes from this community, said.
Another vote bank of the party in urban pockets, the Khatri community, has got the lion’s share after the Jat Sikhs as seven party leaders from this community have made it to the list of office-bearers.
According to party insiders, discontentment has started brewing among the leaders over “caste imbalance” in the new team.
Jakhar, however, said he has done a balancing act by giving due representation to the old guards and those who have recently joined the pasty.
On BJP’s preference to the Sikhs, especially Jat Sikhs, leading political analyst Dr Pramod Kumar says: “By ignoring its traditional vote bank of urban and semi-urban Hindus, the BJP is doing a conceptual error in Punjab,” he said.
“Even if the BJP becomes a party of Sikhs and Akalis become party of Hindus, it won’t negate the core ideologies of the parties and it’s a fact that BJP’s core ideology is Hindu and Akalis’s ideology is Sikhs,” he added.
He said it’s a wrong strategy that the party is going to villages where they have competition with Jat Sikhs of the Congress, Akalis and the AAP, whereas it is ignoring its exclusive support base of urban and semi-urban pockets.