Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu joining the Bharatiya Janata Party has not come as a surprise. He was often rumoured to be close to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Besides, his stand against radicals and extremists has always been bold and unambiguous.
Added to that he is the grandson of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, who is credited with finishing militancy in Punjab and was killed in a suicide bomb attack by militants.
Interestingly, Bittu has always been a close confidante of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and is a very good friend of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.
At one point of time, he was even rumoured to be negotiating with the Aam Aadmi Party. He, like quite a few sitting Punjab Congress MPs, was a strong votary of an alliance with the AAP.
Once the Congress and the AAP decided to separate in Punjab, BIttu’s prospects on a Congress ticket from Ludhiana were not very bright. There are several reasons for this. There is a ten-year anti-incumbency against him.
He has represented Ludhiana twice since 2014 when the then-sitting Congress MP Manish Tewari could not contest for health reasons.
Bittu was a sitting MP from Shri Anandpur Sahib and had been refused a ticket from there as the party fielded Ambika Soni. As luck would have it, Tewari fell sick and Congress fielded Bittu from Ludhiana.
One strong grievance of his supporters in Ludhiana is that Bittu never takes any phone calls from anyone, a weakness he admits himself.
His proximity with Chief Minister Mann also did not go well with senior and powerful leaders like Bharat Bhushan Ashu who had to spend months in jail under the current regime.
Second and the most important for Bittu’s switchover is his realisation of the ground reality, which is a powerful positive sign for the BJP that the urban Hindu voters are tilting towards the party.
Bittu’s core support base has been the urban Hindus, who voted for him twice as an acknowledgement of gratitude towards the late Beant Singh.
This time the going would have been very tough for Bittu had he contested on the Congress ticket. The urban Hindu vote is expected to go in favour of the BJP, particularly after the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.
That had left Bittu in a desperate situation if he had to contest on the Congress ticket. BJP was the only option, which he eventually opted for.
In the BJP, in case it wins a third term at the centre, he has a strong chance of becoming a minister also.
While it is a masterstroke for the BJP to win over a three-time MP from Congress to its fold and that too on a day when it announced that it will go solo in Punjab, it is a great setback for the Congress which is seeing its base desperately eroding and shrinking.
A couple of weeks ago, the Deputy Leader of the Congress in Punjab assembly Dr Raj Kumar Chabewal also resigned from the party and joined the AAP.
It will also be a personal setback for Rahul Gandhi, who had specially picked up Bittu in 2009 to contest from Anandpur Sahib at the young age of 33. And he never looked back since then.
Bittu would himself say it that he started wearing a turban only after Gandhi told him to do so.
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