‘The Dhillon experiment’: What new Punjab BJP chief’s appointment signals for party ahead of 2027 polls

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Chandigarh: The Bharatiya Janata Party Thursday appointed 76-year-old former Congress leader Kewal Singh Dhillon as the new president of its Punjab unit, replacing Sunil Jakhar in an organisational reshuffle aimed at strengthening the party ahead of assembly elections next year.

In a state where the BJP has struggled to emerge as a dominant force on its own, analysts said Dhillon’s appointment is significant not because he represents the rise of a dominant mass leader within the party, but because it has once again underlined what they said was the BJP’s leadership vacuum in Punjab.

From former Congress heavyweight Sunil Jakhar’s appointment as state party chief, to Dhillon’s, the BJP’s pattern of struggle in Punjab is impossible to ignore. The BJP, despite pushing to expand in Punjab on its own since its break-up with the Shiromani Akali Dal in 2020, continues to rely on turncoat Congress leaders to run its state unit.

“Dhillon fits into a carefully constructed political template. He is a Sikh. He is a Jat. He comes from the politically decisive Malwa belt. He has money, networks and long-standing connections with Punjab’s traditional political elite,” says Dr Kanwalpreet Kaur of the Department of Political Science, DAV College Sector 10, Chandigarh.

“But beyond that social arithmetic, Dhillon has never really been regarded as a towering political figure in Punjab—not even during his decades in the Congress.”

For most of Dhillon’s political career, he was viewed more as a wealthy businessman-politician with organisational utility rather than a mass leader.

Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring said a party “daydreaming” of coming to power in Punjab had no leaders from its own stable.

“@BJP4India appointing @KewalDhillonPB as @BJP4Punjab president speaks for itself about the state of the party in Punjab. The party that is ‘DAYDREAMING’ about forming the government in Punjab cannot find anyone worthy from its own stable to lead the state,” he wrote on X.

“The party is left with no option but to outsource even its state presidents-second in a row. First it was @sunilkjakhar and now Mr Kewal Singh Dhillon, both from the Congress,” he added.

Congress MP from Chandigarh Manish Tewari also took a dig at the BJP for finding only former Congressmen as its state heads.

“It is a telling comment of the State of @BJP4India in Punjab that they can only find former Congressmen to appoint as State Presidents,” he wrote on X.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann too has referred to the plethora of Congress turncoats in the BJP as the “Congress wing” of the BJP.

Reacting to Dhillon’s appointment, Bhagwant Mann mocked the BJP’s choice on X: “Congratulations to Kewal Dhillon who was rejected by the people of Barnala in 2017-2019 and 2024 on becoming the President of the BJP. My sympathies with Sunil Jakhar. May God give the strength to Ravneet Bittu, Manpreet Badal, Fateh Jang Bajwa, Tarun Chugh and Ashwani Sharma to bear this humiliation.”

Prof Harjeshwar Singh of the Department of History, SGGS College Sector 26, Chandigarh said Dhillon’s politics has always represented the “traditional political culture of factionalism, entitlement, sycophancy, backroom manoeuvres, patronage and coterie networking”—precisely the brand of politics many Punjabis have grown disillusioned with.

“Yet, ironically, this is the very political stock the BJP has imported in bulk after its split with the Shiromani Akali Dal. From former Congressmen to rejected Akalis, the BJP’s Punjab unit increasingly resembles a rehabilitation centre for political leftovers rather than a party building a fresh ideological or organisational identity in the state,” said Singh.

However, BJP leaders seem confident. Union Minister Ravneet Bittu and BJP MLA Ashwani Sharma congratulated Dhillon, saying that the party would indeed progress under his leadership.

Strategic calculation

By appointing him as Punjab BJP chief, the party appears to be making a broader strategic calculation ahead of the 2027 assembly elections.

Experts said Dhillon ticks the most important of boxes in Punjab politics: being a Sikh. The other “qualifications” of being a Jat, the dominant agrarian caste in Punjab politics, and being from the politically decisive Malwa belt are common with the outgoing chief Jakhar.

Congress leader Sukhjinder Randhawa took the Thursday reshuffle to remind Jakhar that he left the Congress on the grounds that the party had not chosen him to become the chief minister of Punjab because he was not a Sikh.

“What about the fact that the BJP has removed you even before you could complete your term? Now BJP is also anti-Hindus? Will you leave the BJP because of this?” wrote Randhawa on X.

Harjeshwar Singh said that the “Dhillon experiment” has only exposed the limits of the BJP’s Punjab strategy.

“In recent times the saffron party attempted caste and community-based social engineering in Punjab—trying to build coalitions among urban Hindus, Dalits and sections of non-Jat groups. But with little visible electoral breakthrough, the party now appears to be falling back on Punjab’s default political formula: accommodating influential Jat Sikh faces in the hope of symbolic acceptability,” Harjeshwar Singh told ThePrint.

“If Dhillon was genuinely capable of transferring significant Jat Sikh support to the BJP, one would expect him to first retain relevance in his own political backyard. Instead, he has repeatedly lost elections from the heartland of Jat Sikh politics itself. The claim that he can suddenly become the BJP’s bridge to rural Sikh Punjab appears politically unconvincing,” he added.

Rupture with Congress

Politically, Dhillon’s journey in the Congress followed a fairly predictable Punjab pattern.

He was initially seen as a “moneybag candidate”—somebody who could finance campaigns, build local organisational structures and remain useful to the party establishment.

Over time, he did develop influence in Barnala and parts of the Malwa belt and eventually became a two-time MLA from Barnala in 2007 and 2012. He also rose to become senior vice-president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee. However, he was never chosen to be a minister.

Dhillon’s political stature remained closely tied to Captain Amarinder Singh.

He was considered one of Amarinder’s loyalists and remained firmly in his camp during the factional wars inside the Punjab Congress, particularly during Amarinder’s prolonged tussles with Navjot Singh Sidhu and sections of the Congress high command.

Even during his peak years in the Congress, however, Dhillon was never perceived as an independent power centre.

He was largely seen as part of the extended Amarinder ecosystem—influential because of proximity to power, resources and networking abilities rather than a personal political movement or mass following.

Dhillon’s electoral decline began with the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab. In 2017, he lost the Barnala Assembly seat to AAP’s Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer. In 2019, the Congress fielded him against Bhagwant Mann from Sangrur in the Lok Sabha elections, but he lost again.

The final rupture with the Congress came ahead of the 2022 Punjab assembly elections when the party denied him a ticket from Barnala and instead chose Manish Bansal, son of former Union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal.

Dhillon openly revolted and was eventually expelled from the Congress for anti-party activities. He joined the BJP in June 2022—notably after Captain Amarinder Singh himself had already aligned with the BJP following the collapse of his Punjab Lok Congress experiment. In many ways, Dhillon simply followed the Amarinder camp into the BJP fold.

The BJP immediately began using him as part of its attempt to build a post-Akali Dal political structure in Punjab. He was fielded as the BJP candidate from Sangrur in the Lok Sabha bypoll the same year, but was defeated by Simranjit Singh Mann of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar).

After Barnala MLA Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer won as Sangrur MP in the 2024 general election, Dhillon was fielded by the BJP for the Barnala legislative assembly bypoll, but he was defeated by the Congress candidate, Kuldeep Singh Dhillon.

Business background

Born in Tallewal village near Barnala in Punjab’s Malwa region, Dhillon chose business over education. He left for the US before he could complete his graduation from SD College Barnala.

But returned to start his business. His first company, Dhillon Brothers, was incorporated in 1979 and over the years the family has built a significant commercial footprint in Punjab and Chandigarh.

Dhillon’s business became associated with several “firsts” in Chandigarh and Punjab despite starting during the difficult period of Punjab militancy in the 1980s.

His company, Dhillon Kool Drinks and Beverages, brought PepsiCo into India and was its first and largest franchise. Tewari once publicly defended Dhillon by recalling that “when no one was prepared to invest a penny in Punjab during the days of terror, he brought PepsiCo to Punjab”.

In 1980, he set up a cinema hall in Chandigarh, which, in 2000, was redeveloped into Chandigarh’s first mall-format entertainment complex.

The property was leased to a company called E-City, which launched the Fun Republic mall, which soon became a landmark in Chandigarh’s urban culture. It housed the city’s first McDonald’s outlet and symbolised the arrival of multiplex and mall culture in the region.

But the relationship between the Dhillon Group and E-City eventually deteriorated.

The project soon became mired in controversy. In 2007, the Chandigarh administration cracked down on the business over alleged building violations and other regulatory irregularities.

The matter snowballed into a major controversy involving allegations of illegal construction and misuse of commercial space.

Dhillon was later named as an accused by the CBI in connection with the case. However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court eventually quashed proceedings against him.

Still, the controversy damaged the sheen around one of Chandigarh’s most visible commercial projects. By 2016, Fun Republic had finally shut down, marking the end of what was once projected as a symbol of the city’s new consumer era.

Over the years, Dhillon also became known for his enormous wealth. During the 2012 Punjab Assembly elections, he was among the richest candidates in the state, declaring assets running into well over Rs 100 crore. In 2022, he declared more than Rs 212 crore.

(Edited by Sugita Katyal)

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