Chandigarh:
The BJP has begun laying out its organisational and electoral roadmap for Punjab ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections, with party national general secretary BL Santosh using his two-day Punjab visit to push a clear message: organise anti-drug rallies, create booth-level committees by September 30 to strengthen the organisation on the ground, and build a campaign around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s welfare and development agenda.
At a meeting with Punjab BJP leaders and workers in Ludhiana, Santosh stressed that the party should organise anti-drug yatras across all 117 Assembly constituencies in September. Senior BJP leaders from Delhi are expected to participate in or lead several of these programmes. The focus on drugs is significant, with the BJP seeking to turn an issue that cuts across Punjab’s urban-rural and political divides into one of the principal themes of its 2027 campaign.
The strategy also comes with a wider political calculation. Both the Congress in 2017 and the AAP in 2022 rode to power on promises to tackle Punjab’s drug problem. The BJP now appears keen to reclaim that issue, particularly after Prime Minister Modi launched the Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat Sankalp Abhiyan on August 2 as part of a 100-week nationwide anti-drug campaign. Party leaders have also been asked to mobilise people to watch Mann Ki Baat, with the possibility that the Prime Minister could highlight the drug menace in Punjab.
For the BJP, drugs offer an issue that can potentially transcend the state’s often dominant panthic and identity-driven political discourse around sacrilege, Bandi Singhs and Sikh issues. The party’s assessment appears to be that an aggressive anti-drug campaign can give it a broader connect with voters across Punjab, while allowing it to project itself on an issue that has been central to the political narrative of the state for over a decade.
But Santosh’s message was not restricted to campaign themes. Booth-level organisation was a major focus. Punjab has around 25,000 polling booths, and under the BJP’s organisational protocol, each booth committee comprises 11 members. The party has so far constituted committees at around 15,000 booths and has been asked to complete the remaining 10,000 booth committees by September 30, with a detailed organisational report to be submitted thereafter.
The booth push addresses one of the BJP’s biggest organisational weaknesses in Punjab, particularly after the farmers’ agitation. The party had struggled with a shortage of workers and booth-level machinery, especially in rural Punjab. Santosh’s directive is therefore aimed at rebuilding the BJP’s grassroots structure well before the election campaign formally begins.
Alongside this, the party has been asked to organise outreach programmes to mark PM Modi completing 25 years in public life, publicise central government welfare schemes and take these achievements directly to voters. The message from Santosh’s Ludhiana meeting is clear: the BJP does not want to wait for the 2027 campaign to begin. It is attempting to build the election campaign from the booth upwards, with drugs as the central public issue and Modi’s welfare record as the political counter-narrative.
The organisational push also comes amid differences within the Punjab BJP over the possibility of an alliance, with a sizeable section of state leaders opposed to any tie-up. For now, however, the roadmap emerging from the party’s central leadership is focused on building the BJP’s own organisational strength and preparing it to fight across Punjab’s 117 seats.
