Without any qualms after 50-years of association with Congress, the party veteran Sunil Jakhar today jumped onto the BJP bandwagon after having quit the grand old party on Saturday. He joined the saffron party in the presence of BJP president J.P. Nadda in New Delhi.
One after the other stalwarts are leaving Congress putting a question mark on the leadership of the Gandhi family. After losing two general elections Congress no more attracts leaders and workers and seems to be on its way to extinction.
In the case of Jakhar, he seemed to not have reconciled to having been denied the post of Chief Minister when Captain Amarinder was replaced with Charanjit Singh Channi though he was favoured by the majority of the MLAs. Since then he had been issuing brusque statements criticising the party and even hitting at the caste of Channi raising a storm in the Dalit community.
Recently, the Congress high command had in a disciplinary action divested him from all party posts after issuing him a show-cause notice. He did not reply to the notice but decided to quit the party. He was asked to resign as PPCC chief in 2021 to make room for Navjot Sidhu. He had opposed the party's decision to replace Captain as CM when elections were so near.
In a daring message to Congress high command on Facebook-live, he accused Ambika Soni of creating a Hindu-Sikh divide in the secular party when she opposed his candidature for the post of Punjab CM on the grounds that a Hindu can not be the CM of a Sikh majority state.
Jakhar warned Rahul Gandhi that he should be wary of sycophants lest they destroy the party. "You should at the earliest take the reins of the party in your hands lest it is too late," he had said. Ridiculing the Udaipur "Chintan Shivir" of the Congress, Jakhar had said that it is nothing but a drama. Congress should instead do "Chinta Shivir" as to why it lost the election in UP where its candidates did not even poll 2000 votes in each constituency. Besides losing in Uttarkhand and Punjab.
Jakhar's joining BJP has given the saffron party some reason to believe that it will gain strength in Punjab where it was routed in the recent Assembly elections. But the experience shows that before the elections in Punjab big names of the Congress like Captain Amarinder Singh, Rana Gurmeet Sodhi, Fateh Jang Bajwa, and many others could not alter the fate of the BJP in Punjab. Time will tell whether Jakhar makes any difference to the prospects of the BJP.
But for the time being BJP's honeymoon with Jakhar seems to have begun. Nadda while welcoming Jakhar said that he had outgrown his identity from the petty politics of the Congress. "In Punjab, there are issues related to drugs and terrorism and it is important that people who have a national interest in mind join the BJP," Nadda said, adding that many leaders from Akali Dal and Congress in Punjab who have a national interest in their minds are joining the party.