New Delhi: Controversies and Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga go hand in hand. While his colleagues praise him for his social media reach and influence, his political adversaries call him a Twitter troll.
On Friday morning, his arrest from his home by the Punjab Police grabbed headlines. So did the ensuing drama, which saw the Punjab cops stopped by the Haryana Police en route, and the Delhi Police taking custody of Bagga and bringing him back to the capital.
Bagga’s ‘kidnapping’ — the Delhi Police had lodged a kidnapping case after his arrest — topped the hashtag charts on Twitter, a platform that he has utilised for outreach on behalf of the BJP.
Last month, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sunny Ahluwalia filed a complaint against Bagga for allegedly making incendiary social media posts, including a “threat” against party chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. The case was lodged at the cyber cell in Mohali (Punjab) under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), 505-2 (statements creating or promoting enmity) and 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
As Friday’s episode played out, the BJP stood “firmly” in support of him. The party’s Delhi unit also said they would be taking up the matter with the National Commission for Minorities for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.
“This is not an arrest but a kidnapping. This is not a good precedent. They are using the police to score political points. Not only Bagga, Punjab Police had earlier booked the Delhi BJP’s Naveen Kumar, too. Imagine if the Delhi Police had been under Arvind Kejriwal,” said Delhi BJP spokesperson Harish Khurana.
According to sources, the matter is also being viewed in terms of the political messaging behind it. “The way the entire BJP is standing firmly behind Bagga shows the respect the party also has for the Sikh community. PM Modi has taken several steps for the community, and no one will allow disrespect to it,” said a BJP leader.
‘All anti-nationals must be punished’
Speaking to ThePrint in 2020, Bagga, a native of Delhi, had said he followed just one philosophy in life: Saam-Daam-Dand-Bhed — by hook or by crook. “All anti-nationals must be punished,” he added.
His social media reach and influence can be gauged by the fact that he was among the 150-odd social media influencers who were invited by PM in an event called #super150.
According to a Delhi BJP functionary, Bagga is known for speaking his mind and has a history of disrupting events, getting into scuffles and initiating online spats with political adversaries and ‘anti-nationals’.
“He doesn’t think twice before taking on any big names, including Subramanian Swamy. At the time Swamy was being critical of the BJP no one from the BJP was officially speaking on the matter but Bagga took it up through his social media, not once but quite a few times,” said another functionary.
His “strong social media” presence is often cited as his major strength, as he is able to get much more traction even than BJP ministers, added another party functionary.
Also read: Infighting in Delhi BJP? Tajinder Bagga ‘removed’ from WhatsApp groups over ‘chips’ row
Tweets, poster wars & disrupting events
Thirty-six-year-old Bagga joined a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakha at an early age, just like his father. His father had told ThePrint earlier that Bagga had had his political awakening at the shakha, which later led to him dropping out of school after Class 10 and taking to active politics. However, Bagga said he dropped out of school to join his father’s garments business.
Bagga rose to prominence in 2011 after he and a group of friends allegedly entered the chamber of Supreme Court lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan and allegedly assaulted him for his reported call for a plebiscite in Kashmir.
Bagga and his friends were functioning under the banner of a vigilante group called Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena (BSKS).
This was just the beginning. After this incident, Bagga often grabbed headlines for his controversial tweets, his communally sensitive statements, launching poster wars, and disrupting several events including a book launch of Booker-winning author Arundhati Roy in 2011 — a moment he celebrated years later with a throwback picture on his Twitter account.
Bagga and his group have defaced walls around the Pakistan High Commission and put up posters demanding independence for Balochistan. They’ve pasted other controversial posters, too, including one calling former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi “the father of mob lynching.” Bagga’s outfit also took credit for heckling the late Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in 2012 at an event organised by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi.
He was also behind a campaign to boycott Bollywood star Deepika Padukone’s movies after she visited the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus following a mob attack there in January 2020.
Bagga also runs an e-commerce portal, ‘TshirtBhaiya’, which specialises in “nationalistic merchandise” including T-shirts and jewelleries. One of the items on offer included a T-shirt depicting the controversial 2017 incident where Army Major Leetul Gogoi tied Kashmiri artisan Farooq Ahmad Dar to his jeep as a human shield against a mob.
Rise in the BJP
Bagga joined the BJP’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Jana Yuva Morcha (BJYM), when he was 16, and has since risen up the ranks to become its national secretary.
In 2013, Bagga and a group of BJP workers launched a campaign to “Modi-fy’ India. It was Bagga’s brainchild, and the focus was on highlighting then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the future prime minister. “Bagga loves and respects PM Modi and has displayed this publicly many times. PM Modi is also very fond of him,” said a leader.
After Modi came to power, Bagga started the NaMo Patrika, a website to praise the PM.
Bagga was made a spokesperson for the Delhi BJP in 2017 and was given a party ticket to contest the 2020 Delhi assembly polls from Hari Nagar, but lost. He had expressed a desire to contest from Tilak Nagar, but after Rajiv Babbar was fielded from that constituency, he was asked to settle for Hari Nagar.
According to sources, Bagga rose to greater heights within the BJP after this due to his “active involvement” during the campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha election in West Bengal. “He was among the many leaders who were detained by the West Bengal Police after clashes erupted between Trinamool Congress and BJP workers during Union home minister Amit Shah’s roadshow,” said another BJP leader.
Bagga was also involved in the BJP’s 2021 West Bengal assembly election campaign, as well as the Uttarakhand assembly polls earlier this year. During the latter he sparked a row by posting a morphed photo of Congress leader and former CM Harish Rawat, edited to make him look like Aligarh Muslim University founder Syed Ahmad Khan — amid a controversy over Rawat allegedly promising to start a Muslim university in the state.
The Congress then complained to the chief electoral officer, alleging that the tweet was intended to create communal discord.
Bagga vs AAP
A staunch critic of the Aam Aadmi Party, especially Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Bagga was part of a demonstration — over the CM’s comments on Vivek Agnihotri’s film The Kashmir Files — organised by the BJYM outside Kejriwal’s official residence on 30 March, which saw the gates of the house defaced.
On 31 March, Bagga posted a picture showing himself protesting outside AAP’s headquarters over The Kashmir Files.
Bagga also made allegedly derogatory tweets — which he later deleted — as he targeted Kejriwal over his comments on the film. The remarks earned him an FIR, but he remained unapologetic.
Bagga in the past has also criticised the Congress for its role in the 1984 riots, which saw hundreds of Sikhs killed in the national capital in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
Also read: Bagga tweets & then deletes edited picture of Amul ad that said Muslims destroyed Delhi