BJP eyes Punjab Dalit votes by picking Sampla as National SC Commission head

CHANDIGARH : The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre has given another shot at wooing Punjab’s Dalits by picking party’s community face and former Union minister of state Vijay Sampla for the post of chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Caste (NCSC).

The community comprises more than 30% of Punjab’s population and a sizeable presence in the Doaba region.

Sampla’s appointment, as per insiders, was made keeping in mind the upcoming 2022 assembly polls wherein the party is likely to play Dalit-hindu combine card. A former Lok Sabha MP from the Hoshiarpur constituency, Sampla, who remained minister of state for social justice and empowerment in the first Narendra Modi-led government, was denied ticket from the seat in the 2019 parliamentary polls.

Som Prakash, who won from the segment and was surprisingly made Union minister of state despite being first-time MP, is also belongs to the Ravidassia Dalit community, an important electoral constituency in the state.

Dalit votes hold key to all seats in the Doaba region that has 23 assembly segments.

It is not for the first time that Sampla has been given a strong push by the party high command with an eye on the community vote bank.

He was appointed the state BJP president ahead of the 2017 assembly polls even as the experiment did not bring the desired results.

Of late, the party’s focus has shifted again to the Dalit vote bank, especially after its alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) parted ways over the issue of the three farm laws.

Senior party leaders say the high command is of the view that Dalit vote bank can be pulled through power-sharing as the community is not supporting the farm agitation wholeheartedly in the state at a time when it has only a handful of Sikh faces among its cadres. Also, the party recently appointed prominent Dalit leader and Rajya Sabha MP Dushyant Gautam as in-charge for Punjab affairs.

“By picking an ordinary person like me for the prestigious post, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has once again shown how the BJP government respects Dalits from Punjab,” said Sampla, who worked as a plumber in the Gulf countries in the 1990s before starting his political career as a village sarpanch.