With Sunil Jakhar taking over as new president on Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Punjab unit appears set for an overhaul of its organisational structure to be undertaken to emerge as a serious contender in the state politics ahead  of 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

A former Punjab Congress president who left the party in May 2022 after a five-decade association of his clan, Jakhar, a Hindu Jat,  is expected to help the party shed its image of an urban party in the state and make inroads into areas where it has had little presence till now.

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It’s no surprise that after formally assuming charge on Tuesday, Jakhar stressed the need to shed the small-brother (junior-ally) syndrome and change the mindset of a minor party with a minor vote bank. The party needs to change its way of looking at things in Punjab and everything will change.

The new Punjab BJP chief said the alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) was formed in the mid-1990s when the situation was different. “Punjab is ours. With the changed times, we need to change our way of thinking,” Jakhar, son of former Lok Sabha Speaker late Balram Jakhar, said.

A former Lok Sabha member from Gurdaspur and three-time legislator from Abohar Assembly constituency, Jakhar is the first leader to hail from the politically important Malwa region, which has 69 of 117 Assembly seats, of the state to be appointed as BJP chief in the state.

With Jakhar at the helm, the party hopes to expand its reach beyond Majha and Doaba regions which have traditionally been strongholds of the saffron party.

 The Punjab BJP has recently seen a large number of Congress leaders including former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Jakhar joining the party. The saffron party hopes to gain ground in areas which have hitherto remained out of reach for it.

Senior alliance partner, the SAD, had earlier restricted its junior partner, the BJP, mainly to urban areas by giving it a quota of 23 seats in the 117 member Assembly.

Punjab BJP leaders lament that the party could not build its cadre all over the state due to the alliance with the Akalis forcing the party to concentrate only on Hindu vote bank in the Sikh majority state. But now the party is looking to change its Hindu face as it now has a number of Sikhs in its ranks. Of the 33 organisational districts in Punjab, Sikhs have been made party in-charge in about 20 districts now.

The SAD broke over a two-decade-old alliance with the BJP in 2021 over now-repealed farm laws. The BJP won two seats in the 2022 Assembly polls.  In the recent bypoll for Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat, the BJP finished fourth with 17.85 per cent vote share.