Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: Now, BJP MPs Visit Sajjan Kumar’s Family

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: Three BJP MPs visited Sajjan Kumar’s family to condole his death; party chief Nitin Nabin reprimanded them after backlash from BJP’s own HS Phoolka.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, August 29

For over a week, BJP has been the party positioning itself as the conscience-keeper on Sajjan Kumar; it’s have been demanding Congress apologise for Deepender Hooda’s “role model” remark, with Punjab BJP chief Kewal Singh Dhillon calling it proof of “Congress’ anti-Sikh mindset.” That posture collapsed on its own turf this weekend, when three sitting BJP MPs visited Kumar’s family home to offer condolences — and BJP’s national president had to summon and reprimand them for it.

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: What happened

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: Lok Sabha MPs Ramvir Singh Bidhuri (South Delhi), Kamaljeet Sehrawat (West Delhi) and Yogender Chandolia (North West Delhi) visited Sajjan Kumar’s residence in Piragarhi, Delhi, to pay condolences following his death on August 20 — timed around his prayer meeting, held in the capital on Saturday, August 29.

The visit drew immediate public criticism from within BJP’s own ranks — from HS Phoolka, the veteran 1984-riots-victims’ advocate who joined the party only this April, explicitly as a face of its commitment to that cause.

“Strongly condemn the visit of 3 MPs Kamaljeet Sehrawat, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri and Yogender Chandolia to mass murderer Sajjan Kumar’s residence to offer condolences on his death,” Phoolka said, calling the visit especially indefensible given that BJP had long supported riot survivors’ pursuit of justice and had helped ensure Kumar stayed behind bars. He argued sympathy belonged with victims and their families, “many of whom live the horror of those days even till now,” and called for the three MPs to be boycotted.

BJP national president Nitin Nabin summoned all three MPs on Saturday and expressed his displeasure over the visit, according to party sources. The party moved quickly to distance itself institutionally: BJP spokesperson RP Singh said the MPs had gone to Kumar’s residence “in their personal capacity and not as party persons.”

The Outer Delhi link

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: All three MPs represent constituencies carved out of the old Outer Delhi Lok Sabha seat — the seat Sajjan Kumar himself held for three terms as a Congress MP. That’s a real, documented connection: whatever their party affiliation today, these MPs’ political turf and local networks trace back to territory Kumar built over decades.

It’s worth being precise about what that connection is and isn’t — it’s a matter of shared constituency inheritance and local political courtesy, not necessarily a caste linkage. Unlike the Hooda-Sajjan Kumar relationship, where both men’s shared Jat political base was the explicit, sourced explanation both from local political geography and from Hooda’s own remarks, we don’t have that same specific claim established for these three MPs, whose backgrounds differ.

The more defensible read is that whoever holds these Outer Delhi-descended seats today likely still depends on local networks Kumar once anchored, regardless of ideology — a structural reason for old rivals to end up paying respects that has nothing to do with endorsing his record.

Dhillon applies the same standard to his own party

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: The most notable reaction came from Punjab BJP president Kewal Singh Dhillon — the same leader who, days earlier, had accused Congress of an “anti-Sikh mindset” over Deepender Hooda’s remarks and demanded the party apologise. Dhillon called the MPs’ visit “deeply unfortunate and regrettable,” stressing it was made “in a personal capacity” and “had nothing to do with the BJP as an organisation,” and said the Punjab unit “strongly condemned the gesture.”

“Any expression of sympathy towards such a convict is tantamount to rubbing salt into the wounds of thousands of victim families who lost their loved ones in the carnage,” Dhillon said — language that closely mirrors what he said about Hooda’s remark the week before.

He confirmed that Nabin had “taken serious note of the incident” and reprimanded the three MPs, calling it evidence of “the sensitivity of the BJP leadership towards the feelings of the victims of 1984.”

He contrasted this with what he called Congress’s decades-long “policy of protecting and patronising those accused of the 1984 violence,” crediting the Modi government with reopening the cases through Special Investigation Teams. “Our sympathy and solidarity are only with the victims and their families… There is no place for the perpetrators of the 1984 violence in our policy or politics,” he said.

The reversal, in context

Sajjan Kumar & BJP MPs: The awkwardness is sharpened by BJP’s own history with this case. When the Delhi High Court convicted Kumar in December 2018, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra demanded Rahul Gandhi’s resignation as Congress president over it, saying Gandhi would be “imprisoned in his own conscience.” Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva asked “what compulsion” stopped Congress from expelling “such a criminal” from the party.

ALSO: Hooda on Sajjan Kumar: I Never Said Role Model; Hooda’s Non-Apology Fuels Congress Row

When Kumar received a second life sentence in February 2025, BJP’s RP Singh called it “not a normal killing, it was a genocide” and urged the Centre to push for the death penalty on appeal; BJP MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa made similar demands during the trial. That fourteen-year record of BJP using Kumar as a rhetorical weapon against Congress is precisely what makes three of its own MPs paying condolence calls this weekend so difficult for the party to explain away as personal courtesy.

It also lands squarely inside the same week’s controversy this series has been tracking: Hooda’s “role model” remark, the Punjab-Haryana Congress split it exposed, his subsequent non-apology, and a Congress colleague’s demand for his removal from the CWC. BJP had spent that entire week on the offensive.

This visit — and the reprimand it forced — puts BJP in the position Congress was in days earlier: managing its own leaders’ personal ties to a convicted man against its public political position on him.

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