Mann Blames BJP for Punjab Blasts, DGP Points to ISI; BJP tears into CM

Mann blames BJP: “This is BJP’s election preparation for Punjab…They spread violence, scare people, intimidate them — and then harvest votes. I am telling the BJP: stop these activities.”

Arvind Chhabra

Chandigarh, May 6

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday made one of the most serious allegations a state government head can make: that a national political party — the Bharatiya Janata Party, which leads the government at the Centre — was behind the bomb blasts at the BSF headquarters gate in Jalandhar and the Army cantonment boundary wall in Amritsar the previous night.

He made the allegation not at a press conference or a party rally, but at Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib in Anandpur Sahib, where he had gone to pay obeisance as part of the AAP government’s Shukrana Yatra — a four-day tour of Assembly constituencies to highlight the government’s achievements, particularly the recently passed anti-sacrilege legislation.

“This is BJP’s election preparation for Punjab,” Mann said, speaking to reporters gathered there. “They spread violence, scare people, intimidate them — and then harvest votes. I am telling the BJP: stop these activities.”

Mann blames BJP: He alleged that the BJP, facing elections in Punjab, was following a pattern it had deployed elsewhere — engineering unrest, small blasts, communal friction — to polarise the electorate. The anti-sacrilege law, he said, had frustrated this design by closing off the religious flashpoint route. “The law has sent a strong message that anyone attempting sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib will face strict punishment. This has frustrated those who used such incidents to divide society,” he said.

He invoked Gurbani in closing — Nanak naam charhdi kala, tere bhaane sarbat da bhala — and assured that law and order would be maintained and perpetrators punished strictly.

The problem: Mann’s DGP said something different

Before Mann spoke at Anandpur Sahib, Punjab’s Director General of Police had already addressed the blasts — and pointed in an entirely different direction.

The DGP attributed the incidents to the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, consistent with the established pattern of attacks on Punjab’s security infrastructure that investigators have documented since at least 2022.

Mann is not just Chief Minister. He is also Punjab’s Home Minister.

Two official voices from the same government. Two entirely different answers to the same question: who is behind the blasts? One says a domestic political party. The other says a foreign intelligence agency operating through terror modules.

Both cannot simultaneously be the Punjab government’s position. The people of Punjab — and the investigators on the ground — deserve clarity on which one it is.

Mann blames BJP; BJP tears into CM

The BJP did not wait long. By Wednesday afternoon, the party’s separate voices had responded — and each picked a different thread to pull.

Sunil Jakhar, Punjab BJP president, went straight for the CM-DGP contradiction. “While the Punjab DGP is pointing towards the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI behind these incidents, the Chief Minister, driven by politics, is making irresponsible statements,” he said.

As Mann blames BJP, Jakhar called Mann’s remarks a reflection of “panic and fear of losing his chair” and delivered a pointed aside on the MLA defection crisis: “It would be better if he stopped worrying about his position and instead allowed the police to do their actual job, rather than using them to keep track of MLAs. Because if the MLAs have decided to leave, no amount of police deployment will be able to stop them.”

Union Minister Ravneet Bittu chose the FIR route. He dared Mann to register a case against the BJP to substantiate his claim, and asked a question that Mann has not answered: a BJP office was itself among the targets in the recent series of incidents — why would the BJP attack its own office? He also asked how many grenades were thrown during the West Bengal assembly elections, where the BJP contested vigorously, to challenge Mann’s “BJP pattern in poll states” theory.

Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa landed the sharpest structural blow — and did so with a personal edge. “Punjab’s CM, who is also Home Minister, says BJP is behind the blasts, while Punjab’s DGP says Pakistan’s ISI is responsible,” Bajwa said. “Whom should the people of Punjab trust — the political leadership or the state’s top police officer?”

He then demanded Mann act on his own allegations: disclose his sources, present evidence publicly, and register criminal cases against those responsible. “I dare Bhagwant Mann to act on his own allegations and register a case against the BJP instead of hiding behind politically convenient statements.”

The personal edge came in the final lines. Last April, Bajwa had been booked by Mohali cybercrime police under BNS provisions for allegedly spreading misinformation that could compromise national security, after he claimed during a television interview that 50 bombs had reached Punjab, of which 18 had already exploded. He subsequently moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking to quash the FIR, with his counsel arguing the charges were baseless.

Bajwa drew the line directly on Wednesday: “Ironically, when I raised alarm bells and cautioned Punjabis, Mann’s Punjab Police booked me for allegedly spreading panic and hiding information. Today, the AAP government itself is sending contradictory signals while fear continues to spread among the public.”

Ashwani Sharma, working state president of Punjab BJP, was the most colourful — and the least restrained. He opened with a theological invocation of his own: “Neither does God strike with fists nor with kicks — whenever He punishes, He takes away one’s wisdom.”

Then, directly: “Bhagwant Mann ji, it appears that your mental condition is not stable. You should resign and seek proper medical treatment.” Sharma said Punjab was a border state where security and communal harmony should be the highest priority, and that the Mann government had “completely failed on every front” over four and a half years. “Throwing mud at the BJP to hide its own failures reflects cheap and irresponsible politics,” he said.

What the facts currently show

No arrests have been made in connection with either blast. Forensic examination is ongoing at both sites — the BSF Punjab Frontier Headquarters gate in Jalandhar and the Army cantonment boundary wall at Khasa in Amritsar. The exact nature of the explosive used in the Amritsar incident has not been confirmed; the Jalandhar blast is believed to have involved a mild explosive device. A joint search operation involving the Army, BSF, and police was underway at the Amritsar site.

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