NEW DELHI: Having faced defeat in the municipal polls, BJP leadership has since been proactively trying to revive its unit in the national Capital. Soon after the defeat in the polls, it replaced its president Adesh Kumar Gupta and gave temporary charge to vice president Virendra Sachdeva.
After a few months of probation, Sachdeva has now been given a full term and would be leading the party’s Delhi unit during the Lok Sabha polls in 2024. Sachdeva’s appointment has a message for the Punjabi community in the National Capital that the saffron party continues to trust them for support.
It’s a matter of record that the Punjabis have had a major role in building up the BJP in the national Capital, as also its predecessor the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The triumvirate of Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Kedarnath Sahni and Madanlal Khurana for long not just dominated the party in the national Capital but also city’s politics.
The other community which competed for space are the Vaishyas, who mostly played second fiddle to the Punjabis both within the BJP and also the Congress where Har Kishan Lal Bhagat remaining its undisputed leader for very long.
The constituency of Delhi Dehat (rural) flourished for a while but the huge migration from Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) diminished their support base. BJP is out of power from the city government since 1998, and now it has also lost the control of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, where it ruled for 15 years. This slide in the fortunes of the BJP in the national Capital is concurrent to the changing voter profile. While some may point to the victory of its candidates on all the Lok
Sabha seven seats in 2014 and 2019, it should not be discounted that both these polls have been fought with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as mascot. So, bringing Sachdeva just to give a message to the Punjabi community may not be a very good idea. BJP’s similar attempt to entice Vaishya community came a cropper with Adesh Gupta proving to be a no-match for chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Similarly, their attempt to woo Purvanchal voters with Manoj Tiwari as Delhi unit president too failed. This was largely because the BJP tried foisting an imported Purvanchali face without working to build a foundation among the Purvanchali voters.
While the Purvanchalis lapped Tiwari’s songs, they did not vote for the saffron party. The migrant population in the national Capital first remained with the Congress and after Sheila Dikshit’s demise has shifted lock, stock and barrel to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). This has been proved poll after poll. So coming to occupy the Delhi BJP office at Pandit Pant Marg being a Punjabi face may not be a very comforting proposition for Virendra Sachdeva, whose brief resume is that he is a close acolyte of Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the only surviving member of the Punjabi triumvirate.
Delhi today is no more the city of refugees from Punjab. It’s today a multi-hued cultural mosaic and to lead Delhi one has to be better than just a community face. This was realised by Malhotra himself when the BJP contested the 2008 assembly polls with him as its Chief ministerial face. Dikshit beat incumbency to defeat BJP in 2008 for the third time in a row.
Whether Sachdeva manages to rise to the challenge or not would be known not in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls but in the 2025 assembly polls. But the priority for the BJP as of now is the Lok Sabha polls, where Sachdeva’s role would not be more than that of a poll manager.
Sidharth Mishra Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice
