Why BJP has dropped Kirron Kher in Chandigarh, opted for a local face

For the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, the BJP on Wednesday replaced two-time sitting MP Kirron Kher with Sanjay Tandon, a former Chandigarh BJP chief and the son of former Punjab Deputy CM Balram Das Tandon. Here are the reasons why the party preferred a new candidate over the incumbent MP.

Ten years into her Lok Sabha tenure, Kirron Kher has failed to get rid of the “outsider” tag. Only last month, the actor-politician said, “I left my family and profession to live and work in Chandigarh for the past 10 years”. But senior BJP leaders insisted that a local candidate should be preferred. Kher’s name was missing from the list of four names the local selection committee sent to the central leadership, citing that people in Chandigarh need “a local candidate” this time.

The December 2021 civic polls in Chandigarh, in which debutant AAP won a majority, were an eye-opener for the BJP. While the AAP got 14 councillors in the general house of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, the BJP tally came down from 20 seats in 2016 to 12.

Sanjay Tandon is the longest-serving president of Chandigarh BJP, holding the post from 2010 till 2019. It was during Tandon’s stint that the party won the Lok Sabha polls back-to-back as well as the Chandigarh civic elections. After this success, Tandon became the co-in-charge of Himachal Pradesh BJP. Tandon’s father Balram Das Tandon, a lifelong RSS worker, was the Punjab deputy CM from 1969 to 1970 and later the Governor of Chhattisgarh between 2014 and 2018.

The Congress’s Pawan Bansal won Chandigarh three straight times starting in 1999. In 2014, the BJP fielded Kher in what was her debut election. Asked about her tenure, Federation of Sector Welfare Associations of Chandigarh chairperson Baljinder