Lok Sabha election: Preneet Kaur, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Ravneet Singh Bittu provide BJP familiar Jat Sikh faces, political space in Punjab
BJP is looking to bring in prominent Sikh faces, mostly Jats, from other parties and from outside the political circles after the party decided to go solo in Punjab after 28 years.
The party is in touch with many Sikh leaders from various parties to join its fold as part of its efforts to rely on faces outside the party so as to field 13 candidates in the state, where for nearly three decades it has contested mostly on three Lok Sabha seats.
Two sitting MPs Sushil Kumar Rinku and Ravneet Singh Bittu and diplomat Taranjit Singh Sandhu joined the party in the last few days. Rinku is an SC and was the lone AAP MP and also its nominee for the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Many leaders like Manpreet Badal and a few others have already joined the party in the recent past. Besides them, another sitting MP of Congress Preneet Kaur, wife of Captain Amarinder Singh, also joined the BJP in the recent past.
Bittu, Kaur and Badal provide the BJP familiar Jat Sikh faces in Punjab, where the BJP has largely been restricted to Hindu voters in urban towns of the state.
Sandhu, another Jat Sikh, presents the BJP the much-needed educated, and credible moderate face with a panthic (committed to Sikh faith) background. India's former ambassador to the US, Sandhu's grandfather Sardar Teja Singh Samundri, was among the founders of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). Akali politics in Punjab is primarily based on SGPC.
Samundri is the only person, besides ten gurus of the Sikh sect, who has a hall or any other place in his
