First, a Padma Shri award on the eve of Republic Day, and now a visit by the Prime Minister on February 1 — Ballan’s Dera Sachkhand in Jalandhar is getting top-level attention in a caste-coded politico-religious move with just a year to go for the Punjab assembly elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was invited by Dera Sachkhand Balan chief Sant Niranjan Das to New Delhi on December 5, 2025. (ht file image)Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit the community’s headquarters to mark the 649th birth anniversary of 15th century Bhakti saint Guru Ravidas in a high-stakes outreach to the state’s Dalit heartland.
School in Jalandhar just one day before the tour Received threatening email That turned out to be cheating.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – now a junior former partner in Punjab’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) – had security beefed up anyway for the Prime Minister’s visit to the Ravidasia community court and largely Dalit.
The Doba region, with Jalandhar essentially at its heart, has about 45% Dalit population, a higher concentration than Punjab’s overall 32%, which itself is the highest among all states.
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Of the state’s 117 assembly constituencies, Doaba is believed to influence voters in 23, including Ballan’s dera in at least 19.
The airport will be named after Guru RabidasThe Prime Minister’s schedule is packed for Sunday, as he will arrive in Jalandhar after presenting the Union Budget in New Delhi.
He will land at Adampur Airport at 3:45 PM and formally unveil its new name: Sri Guru Rabidas Ji Airport, Adampur.
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The naming fulfills a long-standing demand and honors the social reformer who rose from a Dalit family to become a symbol of equality and human dignity.
However, the focal point remains His visit to Ballan Deracoming just days after the Center conferred the Padma Shri on its chief, Sant Niranjan Das.
What does this mean for BJP strategy?The BJP’s focus on the Dalit population is strategic but also key to its own position.
Since its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) ended in 2020 due to the scrapped Farm Bill, the party has worked to build an independent electoral footprint.
Data shows the team’s strategy is gaining traction; The BJP increased its vote share from 6.6 percent in the 2022 assembly elections to 18.56 percent in the 2024 assembly elections. Through loyalty to the Ravidassias, the BJP aims to further erode the traditional bases of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Also read | Ahead of the Assembly elections, Modi, Shah visited Punjab to push the BJP
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But according to experts, Dalit voters in Punjab are hardly single. Dr. Kanwalpreet Kaur of DAV College, Chandigarh, to say Print: “Rabidasias and other Dalit voters do not vote for a single party; they often shift depending on local issues, candidates and alliances. He further explained that the community has long sought recognition as a distinct group, and the BJP “wants recognition of identity, in harmony with the community and demands respect for its spirit for national leadership”.
Professor Paramjit Singh, an expert on Dalit issues, before the judge HT said While Ballan Dera can influence voting trends on a micro level, there is often an “illusion that it influences the politics of the Doaba region” on a macro scale.
The BJP leadership urged rivals to refrain from viewing the visit with a biased view. Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu said, “This is a proud moment for Punjab. The Prime Minister has accepted the invitation to join the Rabidas Jayanti celebrations, which aim to promote unity among all communities.”
Punjab BJP president Sunil Zakhar said that Prime Minister Modi’s visit comes on a “special day” when the Union Budget is also being presented, adding that “Prime Minister emphasizes trust and respect”.
According to Zakhar, who switched to the BJP nearly four years ago after decades with the Congress, said the Prime Minister’s move reflected respect for a community that, he claimed, had been ignored or misunderstood by the Congress.
What this means for the Rabidasia communityFor the Ravidasiya community, the visit is a validation of a separate religious identity it claims has erupted since the 2009 assassination of vice-leader Sant Ramananda in Vienna between the sect’s radical Sikh groups and Dalits.
The assassination led the Ravidasiya community to declare a separate religion in 2010, replacing the Guru Granth Sahib, which carries among others some of Guru Ravidas’s verses, with their own holy book, ‘Amrita Vani: Satguru Ravidas Granth’, which is based on Ravidas’ progressive poetry. More focused.
Ravisasia community identified as Ramdasia/Chamar in the census, 10-12% of total population of Punjabwhich may mean that it is a third of the Dalit population.
Amit Shah is also comingJust three weeks after Modi’s visit, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will also visit Punjab. It is a more direct vote campaign with a farmers’ rally in Moga on 22nd February.
Political observers told HT that the Prime Minister’s visit to Dera Sachkhand Ballane in Doaba region and Shah’s rally in Moga, Malwa’s largest region, signaled the saffron party’s intention to expand its political footprint in the state.
Speculations are rife about a possible re-alliance between the BJP and Sukhbir Singh Badal’s SAD, but the BJP is going all out to ensure its presence.
In the rally proposed by Shah, the BJP aims to mobilize around 1 lakh farmers. It will be an outreach to the largely Jat Sikh-dominated farming community – a delicate balance with Prime Minister Modi’s Dalit outreach.
“The repeated visits of the prime minister and the home minister within a month clearly reflect that the party has decided to focus on Punjab,” said a former BJP minister, who was present at the preparatory meeting held on these events.
It got a response from the ruling AAP in the form of big announcements. This is what the state government has announced About 10 acres of land has been acquired To establish ‘Sri Guru Ravidas Vani Adhyayan Kendra’, a research center near Dera in Ballan. Further, Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema said the government will launch a year-long series of state-level programs from February 1 to commemorate the birth anniversary of Guru Rabidas.
(Inputs from Navrajdeep Singh, Ravinder Vasudev, PTI)
