Learn in 5 minutesLudhianaJuly 18, 2026 05:25 PM (IST)
Date first revealed: July 18, 2026, 5:25 PM IST
In 1986, when the BJP was making an attempt to increase its attain throughout the nation, a 29-year-old RSS member from Dhanaullah village in Punjab’s Barnala district joined the get together.
4 many years later, Harjeet Singh Grewal, 69, was appointed chairman of the Nationwide Fee for Minorities (NCM) on Thursday, and his profession was constructed totally on organizational work reasonably than electoral politics.
“Ever since I joined the Bharatiya Janata Get together from the RSS, I’ve labored tirelessly to strengthen the get together’s organizational construction in numerous states whereas discharging numerous obligations assigned to me by the management sometimes,” Grewal advised The Indian Specific.
Mr. Grewal will take up a cupboard place as NCM chief. “I acquired a name from NCM about my appointment on Friday and might be becoming a member of within the subsequent few days. It is a constitutional submit and I’ll work to make sure most welfare of minorities throughout the nation,” he stated.
With this appointment, Grewal turns into the third Sikh to steer the NCM and the second from Punjab. Bharatiya Janata Get together chief Iqbal Singh Lalpura, who hails from Rupnagar district in Punjab, was appointed to the submit in September 2021. He resigned in January 2022 to face the Punjab Meeting elections and was reappointed in April of the identical 12 months. His three-year time period ends in April 2025, leaving the place vacant till Grewal’s appointment.
Beforehand, Haryana Rajya Sabha MP Trilochan Singh served as NCM chairman from 2000 to 2003 throughout the Atal Bihari Vajpayee authorities.
group individual
Mr. Grewal’s rise inside the Bharatiya Janata Get together has been pushed extra by organizational exercise than by electoral success.
Over time, he labored to increase the Bharatiya Janata Get together’s organizational community in Punjab, Haryana, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He based the Bharatiya Janata Get together’s Kisan Morcha in 1990 and later served because the get together’s nationwide president and normal secretary. Within the late Nineteen Nineties, he turned the get together’s first Sikh nationwide secretary. He’s presently a member of the Nationwide Government of the BJP.
Reflecting on his early days as a politician, Grewal stated it was not a straightforward resolution to hitch the Bharatiya Janata Get together throughout the preventing in Punjab. “I joined the Bharatiya Janata Get together within the Nineteen Eighties when Punjab was preventing terrorism. I had the chance to work with leaders like Vajpayee, LK Advani and Arun Jaitley. In 2002, when the Bharatiya Janata Get together was not being taken severely, I We labored in Haryana. However we stored working, increasing our group and bringing in new employees. Now, the get together is in energy for 3 consecutive phrases in Haryana. Floor-level organizing is the spine of any get together,” he stated.
Grewal additionally served as vice-president of the Nationwide Co-operative Federation of India for 15 years, resigning earlier this 12 months.
The face of Bharatiya Janata Get together amid farmers’ agitation
In 2020-2021, throughout the farmers’ motion in opposition to the now repealed farm legal guidelines, Grewal emerged as probably the most seen Sikh faces of the Bharatiya Janata Get together in Punjab.
As a member of the get together committee constituted to have interaction with farmer unions, he participated in a number of conferences between farmer leaders and the union authorities. Nevertheless, negotiations failed to interrupt the impasse and the farmers’ agitation continued for almost 13 months.
His public advocacy for the Bharatiya Janata Get together got here at a private value. Farmers’ unions reportedly staged months of protests in entrance of their properties in Dhanura, uprooting paddy saplings from their fields, interesting to villagers to not hire out their land, and portray anti-Bharatiya Get together slogans on the partitions of their residences.
election setback
Regardless of his prominence inside the get together group, Mr. Grewal has not loved electoral success.
He contested the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat on a Bharatiya Janata Get together ticket in 1996, however obtained solely 12,862 votes. Within the 2017 Punjab Meeting elections, he got here third from Rajpura seat in Patiala district with 19,151 votes. He forfeited his bond in each elections.
Requested why the Bharatiya Janata Get together continues to wrestle in elections in Punjab, Grewal stated, “Issues have modified. Six years in the past, it was nearly a ‘no-go’ scenario for Bharatiya Janata Get together leaders to enter villages. Now individuals welcome us and take heed to our opinions. They wish to reap the benefits of the Centre’s welfare schemes they usually can see the event of the nation below Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They’re additionally seeing the event of the 22 states dominated by the NDA and are step by step realizing that the Bharatiya Janata Get together represents them,” he stated. The actual change for Punjab is what Prime Minister Modi himself stated in Jalandhar on Friday:
Rejecting previous speculations that he was planning to stop the BJP early, Mr. Grewal stated, “These have been simply rumours. I fell in poor health and underwent surgical procedure, which is why I took no political motion for a number of months. I’m wholesome now. I’m a real RSS volunteer and can stay part of the BJP endlessly.”
Mr. Grewal’s appointment comes at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Get together is giving management in Punjab a outstanding organizational presence. In Might, Barnala-based Kewal Singh Dhillon was appointed because the president of the Punjab get together. One other chief from the area is presently main the NCM, and the appointment is seen as a part of the Bharatiya Janata Get together’s efforts to extend outreach to Punjabi and Jat Sikh leaders.
