WASHINGTON, DC: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with his Council of Ministers, there is a significant churn in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership structure as it appointed Sunil Jakhar as the new president of the party in Punjab.
Jakhar, a three-time MLA and one-time MP, replaces Ashwani Sharma. His appointment comes as part of the BJP’s ongoing organisational restructuring, which also saw the announcement of new party presidents for Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Jharkhand.
Jakhar comes from the farmer family of Punjab’s Abohar, which shares its border with Haryana – a prominent reason for the BJP to pick him as a Hindu Jat leader.
भाजपा राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष श्री @JPNadda ने श्री @sunilkjakhar पूर्व सांसद को @BJP4Punjab का अध्यक्ष नियुक्त किया। pic.twitter.com/Pmulx7jnI6
— BJP (@BJP4India) July 4, 2023
Jakhar joined the BJP in May of last year and became a member of its national executive in December. Prior to his association with the BJP, Jakhar served as the chief of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, replacing powerful Sikh leaders Captain Amarinder Singh and Partap Singh Bajwa. He decided to leave the Congress after the 2022 Punjab elections and join the BJP.
Jakhar’s significance within the BJP became evident when he was selected as a member of a five-person committee responsible for investigating the violence during the party’s Nabanna march in Kolkata last year. This appointment marked his first major assignment within the party and established his role as a key figure in the BJP’s plans for Punjab.
Notably, Jakhar comes from a family with a strong political legacy. His late father, Balram Jakhar, was a Gandhi family loyalist and served as the longest-serving Lok Sabha Speaker.
Balram Jakhar also held the position of Madhya Pradesh governor during his distinguished political career.
Like his father, Sunil Jakhar also worked closely with the Gandhi family to lift the party’s fortunes in 2013-15 and 2017-21. It was under his leadership that the Congress wrested control of the state from the SAD-BJP combine after 10 years in the March 2017 polls. He was instrumental in the Congress winning 8 out of 11 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019.
In 2017, Jakhar defied the Modi wave that swept the nation, by winning the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha byelection. Incidentally, the seat has been a pocket borough of the BJP for the last 30 years, having been represented by the likes of Vinod Khanna and Sunny Deol.