Punjab BJP President Kewal Singh Dhillon Takes Charge: Can First Jat Sikh Chief Unlock Punjab?

Punjab BJP President: Kewal Singh Dhillon is BJP Punjab’s first-ever Jat Sikh president. North Desk maps all 16 BJP Punjab chiefs since 1980 — and asks whether this symbolic shift can translate into votes in 2027.

Arvind Chhabra

Chandigarh, June 4

In a move being read as a calculated political signal ahead of the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has, for the first time in its 46-year history in the state, appointed a Jat Sikh as its Punjab president.

Kewal Singh Dhillon, 76, a former Congress MLA from Barnala, formally assumed charge on June 3 at the BJP’s state headquarters in Sector 37, Chandigarh, in a ceremony that blended Sikh Ardas with Vedic mantra chanting — a carefully choreographed image of the Hindu-Sikh unity the party is seeking to project.

The most striking visual of the day: Dhillon installed a portrait of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the party office, invoking the 19th century Sikh empire as the BJP’s new governing ideal. “The Punjab of Maharaja Ranjit Singh was a Punjab where every farmer was prosperous, every faith was respected and no Punjabi lived in fear,” Dhillon said. “We are committed to creating such a Punjab.”

BJP National General Secretary Tarun Chugh backed the framing, calling for governance inspired by the spirit of “Khalsa Raj,” while giving workers a new campaign slogan: “Na Aapda, Na Kaapda, Punjab Mangda Bhajpa.”

The significance of ‘first Jat Sikh’

It is important to note what the appointment is — and what it is not. The BJP has had Sikh presidents in Punjab before. Daya Singh Sodhi held the post from 1997 to 2001, and Vijay Sampla from 2016 to 2018. But both came from Scheduled Caste Sikh communities. Dhillon is the first turbaned Jat Sikh to head the state unit — a distinction that carries enormous political weight in a state where Jat Sikhs form the dominant agrarian community and have historically been the backbone of the Shiromani Akali Dal.

 A state where the CM chair has always been Sikh

The BJP’s move also reflects a deeper, enduring reality of Punjab politics: the state has never had a non-Sikh Chief Minister. The unwritten rule was laid bare most vividly in 2021, when Congress chief Sunil Jakhar was the top choice for the CM’s post to replace Captain Amarinder Singh. Party veteran leader Ambika Soni objected, saying that the state must have a Sikh CM, thus blocking Jakhar because he was not a Sikh.

Jakhar later said senior leaders had warned that making him CM would “set Punjab on fire.” Charanjit Singh Channi, a Sikh, was eventually named CM.

Ironically, the same Sunil Jakhar has been replaced by a Sikh as the BJP’s Punjab president. The BJP is now borrowing a lesson that Congress learned the hard way.

The complete list of Punjab BJP presidents

Since its founding in 1980, BJP Punjab has had sixteen presidents. The first seven — from Dr. Baldev Prakash (1980–1988) through Brij Lal Rinwa (2001–2003) — were all Hindus, with the exception of Daya Singh Sodhi, a Dalit Sikh who served from 1997 to 2001. Avinash Rai Khanna (2003–2007), Rajinder Bhandari (2007–2010), and two tenures of Ashwani Kumar Sharma (2010–13, 2020–23) kept the Hindu streak alive. Vijay Sampla, a Ramdasia Sikh MoS in the Modi cabinet, broke it briefly from 2016 to 2018. Shwait Malik (2018–2020) and Sunil Jakhar (2023–2026) were both Hindus.

Kewal Singh Dhillon, who has now taken charge, is the sixteenth president and the first Jat Sikh.

The civic polls reality check

Punjab BJP president: The appointment follows the BJP’s mixed performance in the recently concluded Punjab municipal elections — its most important electoral test since the 2022 Assembly debacle. The ruling AAP swept the polls, winning 958 of 1,977 wards; Congress finished second with 397; SAD secured 191; and the BJP managed 172. In the Assembly elections four years earlier, the BJP had won just two of 117 seats, and in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the party failed to open its account.

The BJP’s gains in civil polls were largely confined to traditional urban Hindu pockets — exactly the base a Jat Sikh president is meant to expand beyond.

As one analysis noted, “the significance of these gains should not be overstated. The AAP remains overwhelmingly dominant, while the Congress continues to retain a wider presence across many urban centres.”

The Congress-to-BJP pipeline

Punjab BJP President: There is another layer worth examining. Dhillon was a Congress MLA from Barnala for two consecutive terms, held senior positions in the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, and joined the BJP only in June 2022. His predecessor Sunil Jakhar was Congress’s Punjab chief from 2017 to 2021. The BJP’s new Sikh face, like its previous Hindu one, is a Congress migrant.

Party insiders note that Punjab BJP President Dhillon hails from Sangrur district — the home turf of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann — making his appointment a direct territorial challenge to AAP’s stronghold.

At the charge-taking ceremony of Punjab BJP President, former president Jakhar framed the BJP’s approach in terms of long-term sacrifice rather than short-term gain, noting that the party had “even played the role of a junior partner to a regional party in order to strengthen Hindu-Sikh unity” — a reference to its decades-long alliance with the Akali Dal. The two parted ways following the farm laws and any chances of its revival were formally buried when BJP top leader Amit Shah declared at the Moga rally in March 2026 that BJP would contest 2027 alone in Punjab.

Whether a new face, a new icon, and a new slogan can translate into a new vote bank is a question that Punjab — with its long memory and its iron rule about who sits in the CM’s chair — will answer in 2027.

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