If Punjab politics ever institutes a lifetime achievement award for being almost there, Sunil Jakhar would be a unanimous choice.
The latest chapter came last week when the BJP replaced him as its Punjab president with Kewal Dhillon. For Jakhar watchers, it was deja vu.

In the Congress, he was replaced as Leader of Opposition by Charanjit Singh Channi. Later, when he was heading the Punjab Congress, the party brought in Navjot Singh Sidhu as PPCC chief. Then came the biggest heartbreak of all. When Captain Amarinder Singh was shown the door in September 2021, Jakhar seemed destined for the Chief Minister’s chair. Then came the famous argument that Punjab needed a Sikh Chief Minister, and Channi took oath while Jakhar watched history unfold from the front row.

Politics, they say, is about timing. Jakhar’s problem is that every time the music stops, there is always one more chair available, and each time for someone else. The tragedy is not that he never reached the top. It is that he reached the waiting room so many times that he practically became part of the furniture.

Punjab Congress leaders reached Rahul Gandhi’s meeting armed with explanations. Gandhi, it appears, came armed with results.
The municipal poll numbers were reportedly sitting in a file before him. Worse, among the figures was Gidderbaha, where AAP managed to wrest a seat from the home turf of Punjab Congress chief Raja Warring. What followed, insiders say, was less a review meeting and more a cross-examination. There was no shortage of reasons for the party’s poor showing. Local factors, organisational issues and the ruling party’s machinery all found mention.

The problem was that the examiner seemed unimpressed. What followed was a “third warning” to the leaders. “Put your act together, otherwise action will follow.” In Punjab Congress circles, the civic poll results are now being seen not merely as an electoral setback but as a possible trigger for some organisational housekeeping.
And Delhi, as every Congress leader knows, occasionally prefers spring cleaning before spring arrives.

A Deputy Commissioner recently received what must rank among the more unusual calls from the Chief Minister’s Office, at 3 am.
The message was simple: the Chief Minister was considering an early-morning walk in the city and wanted to interact with morning walkers. The district administration, naturally, sprang into action. After all, when a VVIP decides to walk, many others have to run.

The IAS officer is learnt to have begun making preparations before dawn. Security arrangements, route planning and logistics were quickly set in motion. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the plan vanished. Somewhere between 3 am and sunrise, wiser counsel apparently prevailed.

The proposed interaction with morning walkers was shelved and the much-anticipated walk never took place. As for the morning walkers, they completed their routine blissfully unaware that, for a few hours, they had almost become part of an unscheduled outreach exercise.

Punjab politics has seen friendships survive electoral defeats, party switches and bitter rivalries. The bond between former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and newly appointed Punjab BJP chief Kewal Dhillon was often counted among them. That is why many in political circles were taken aback when Amarinder publicly questioned Dhillon’s elevation, saying he was not capable of leading the BJP in Punjab and adding that he had not even been consulted on the appointment. The remarks were seen as unusually sharp, coming from a leader known to have shared a warm equation with Dhillon for years.

Dhillon exercised restraint. In most of the interviews, he chose not to return fire. Describing Amarinder as “a very wise leader”, “an able administrator” and someone who had delivered as Chief Minister, Dhillon refused to be drawn into a public spat. While Amarinder’s outburst has fuelled speculation about his relationship with the BJP’s new state leadership, Dhillon’s measured reaction has left many wondering whether he is deliberately keeping the door open to reconciliation. For now, the silence and the next move belong to the Captain.