The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Diplomat’s debut: In tough seat for BJP, Sandhu treads moderate line
Having quit as envoy to US just months ago, Taranjit Singh Sandhu is still coming to grips with life on campaign trail
IT WAS an unusual start to the day for BJP candidate and India’s former ambassador to the United States Taranjit Singh Sandhu as he hugged Punjab Cabinet minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal at Jama Masjid near Hall Gate in the walled city of Amritsar last Thursday. Both were present to celebrate Eid. Sandhu and Dhaliwal are both candidates, for the BJP and AAP, respectively in the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat, which votes on June 1. However, campaigning has begun in right earnest in the constituency, with Sandhu making his political debut and Dhaliwal seeking to put behind his 2019 electoral rout from the seat. Dhaliwal incidentally has his own link to the Indian diaspora in the Americas, as the Punjab government's Minister for NRI Affairs.
The grandson of Teja Singh Samundari, known in Punjab for his role in the gurdwara reform movement as a Sikh leader, and in the freedom movement as a Congress leader, who just recently joined the BJP, 61-year-old Sandhu seems focused for now on avoiding a war of words. Yet another diplomat pitched into the poll fray by the BJP, he is getting to know party leaders and workers in Amritsar, and trying to hit the ground.
He doesn't agree with those who accuse him of being inexperienced in politics. “I did public service as a bureaucrat, and I consider politics an extension of that,” he says.
It is the BJP'S third attempt to send a high-profile figure to Parliament from Amritsar, after former finance minister Arun Jaitley and Union minister Hardeep Puri, who was also a diplomat once. Both Jaitley and Puri lost, despite the Modi waves, in 2014 and 2019. While Jaitley was later inducted into Parliament via the Rajya Sabha, Puri was already an Upper House
MP when he contested in 2019.
The last time the BJP won from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat was in 2009, when its candidate was ex-cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, now with the Congress.
That the diplomat trappings of the former Ambassador -who was posted in the US from February 2020 to January 31, 2024 -- have continued is evident. Sandhu has staff that books his appointments in advance, and it is difficult for anyone to penetrate his chalked-out schedule. However, he has been trying to change that, pointing out that these days there is hardly a gap in his packed daily campaign events. With his wife Reenat, the Indian Ambassador to the Netherlands, unable to join him on the campaign, Sandhu is being supported by his nephew and nieces.
Incidentally, Sandhu is a school mate of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal from Sanawar. The BJP is contesting its first Lok Sabha election without the support of the SAD in a very long time but, Sandhu says, that hasn't hurt his personal relationship with Badal.
Acknowledging that this has, however, made his task more difficult, Sandhu says: “I feel that the people of Amritsar are hungry for development, and I have experience that can help bring development agenda into focus." concentrates on promises along these lines.
What about his views on the Congress and its government's role in Operation Blue Star? Pointing out that he was studying in Delhi during the 1984 events, including the anti-sikh riots, he says that while Amritsar still remembers Operation Blue Star, "People of Amritsar have elected Congress MPS. They have elected Congress governments. I think the people of Amritsar have shown a much broader vision. And therefore, I see no reason why anybody should object to me joining the BJP.”
On allegations that the BJP has been on a path of confrontation with Sikhs after the farmer agitation of 2020, he said, “The BJP is not an anti-sikh party. I have worked with PM (Narendra) Modi for 10 years. I know the number of blacklists (naming people allegedly associated with Khalistan) that were removed by him compared to earlier times, the number of other initiatives for the Sikhs.”