RENEGADE SEASON IN THE BJP

The party is poaching leaders left and right to shore up its Punjab state unit and broaden its electoral prospects. But going down that path has its own pitfalls 

- By Anilesh S. Mahajan

On January 18, as Rahul Gandhi's mammoth Bharat Jodo Yatra crossed state borders to enter Manser in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra district from Ghatota village in Punjab's Hoshiarpur, TV news channels were also flashing images of another development in the Congress. Party leader Manpreet Badal, the former Punjab finance minister, was joining the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at their national headquarters in Delhi.

A scion of the famous Badal family of Punjab who control the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Manpreet is not known for the political skills of his more illustrious family members. For the BJP, however, he is a prize catch all the sameone they can use to embarrass the Congress while also trying to make inroads into SAD chief Sukhbir Badal's erstwhile bastion, the core Malwa region. Since November 2021, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP at the Centre were forced to back down and repeal the new farm laws, the party has been in a slump in Punjab, with the cadre demoralised and the support base shrinking. The party soon turned to engineering defections in the Congress and SAD to shore up the state unit. Manpreet is only the latest in the string of renegades who have crossed over, including former Congress chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and his family. Of course, these leaders come with their own baggage of factionalism, corruption allegations and jockeying for prime positions. Already, there are rumblings-some of the defectors have refused to attend party meetings until they get what they were promised. As expected, all this has left the core BJP cadre fuming.