Express News Service
CHANDIGARH: The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), which is trying to expand its base in Punjab, in all likelihood might change its state leadership by mid-September with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and due to the dismal performance in the recent assembly poll.
It will also try to accommodate Congress leaders who had some time back joined the BJP and might offer important positions to these leaders who had recently met Prime Minister Narendra Modi also during his visit to Punjab.
Sources said that the aim of this change in the organisational structure and to expand the party is to accommodate leaders who have some time back joined the BJP from the Congress. Thus the party might offer important positions to these leaders which include former Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar, five former cabinet ministers Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Raj Kumar Verka, Gurpreet Kangar and Sundar Sham Arora and former MLA Fateh Singh Bajwa.
Both Sodhi and Bajwa are already active in the organisational structure of the party. Thus several leaders from the state core committee, district committees and morchas of the party are likely to be changed. Keeping in view the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as for the first time after their three-decade-old alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) broke the party will be fighting on all the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state as earlier it use to contest only three seats thus the party needs established leaders, said sources.
Since the BJP was disseminated in the assembly elections in March, there was talk of a change in leadership as it contested 73 assembly seats out of 117 total seats but could muster only two seats: state president Ashwani Sharma won from Pathankotand Jangi Lal Mahajan from Mukerian.
CHANDIGARH: The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), which is trying to expand its base in Punjab, in all likelihood might change its state leadership by mid-September with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and due to the dismal performance in the recent assembly poll.
It will also try to accommodate Congress leaders who had some time back joined the BJP and might offer important positions to these leaders who had recently met Prime Minister Narendra Modi also during his visit to Punjab.
Sources said that the aim of this change in the organisational structure and to expand the party is to accommodate leaders who have some time back joined the BJP from the Congress. Thus the party might offer important positions to these leaders which include former Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar, five former cabinet ministers Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Raj Kumar Verka, Gurpreet Kangar and Sundar Sham Arora and former MLA Fateh Singh Bajwa.
Both Sodhi and Bajwa are already active in the organisational structure of the party. Thus several leaders from the state core committee, district committees and morchas of the party are likely to be changed. Keeping in view the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as for the first time after their three-decade-old alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) broke the party will be fighting on all the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state as earlier it use to contest only three seats thus the party needs established leaders, said sources.
Since the BJP was disseminated in the assembly elections in March, there was talk of a change in leadership as it contested 73 assembly seats out of 117 total seats but could muster only two seats: state president Ashwani Sharma won from Pathankotand Jangi Lal Mahajan from Mukerian.
