PM Modi headed to a village in Punjab barely 4 hours after the budget. Here's why

BArely 4 hours after the unification Budget 2026 introduction in Parliament, ground government minister Narendra Modi was airborne, headed for the Adampur airport in Punjab's Jalandhar, for two key events that already look to the next year. There was a hint of this 2027 focus in Nirmala Sitharaman's speech too — in the very first sentence.First, why the PM is headed to Ballan, a village in Punjab.Punjab is going to polls early 2027, and the BJP is seeking to court Dalit voters, specifically Ravidassias, with PM Modi paying a visit to Dera Sachkhand at Ballan village near Jalandhar.And he will also rename the airport where he lands, after Guru Ravidass, the 15th-century mystic-philosopher-poet who is the patron saint of the Ravidassia community concentrated in the Doaba region of Punjab.February 1 happens to be Guru Ravidass's birth anniversary.Nirmala Sitharaman noted this right at the start of her budget speech. On the sacred occasion of Magh Purnima and the birth anniversary of Guru Ravidass, I present the budget for the year 2026-2027," she said.Why PM is visiting Dera Sachkhand in BallanPM Modi's caste-coded politico-religious moves come less than two weeks after Dera Sachkhand chief Sant Niranjan Dass was chosen on Republic Day eve for the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour. Security was particularly tight in Ballan and wider Jalandhar as some schools in the city had received threat emails a day before; though those turned out to be hoax.Modi's visit will certainly be a fillip to the workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is hoping to become more than just a junior ex-partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab. Its Ravidassia community outreach is focused on Dalits at large.Numbers that matter: Punjab's Dalits and BJPDalits constitute nearly one-third of the population of Punjab, which is the highest among all states. In Doaba, one of Punjab's three main regions with the others being Malwa and Majha, this proportion of Dalits in the total population goes up to nearly 45%.Electorally, it means this: Of the 117 assembly seats in Punjab, the Doaba region accounts for 23, with the dera at Ballan believed to influence voters in at least 19 of these.The Dalit population is not a monolith, though. About a third of the Dalit population — 10-12% of Punjab — is Ravidassia, Ramdassia or Ad-Dharmi/Chamar as per Census categories, all belonging to the Scheduled Castes but with varied religious and cultural practices.Why it matters to RavidassiasThe Ravidassias, or at least a significant section of the Dalits, extracted themselves from mainstream Sikhism after 2009, the year of assassination of Ballan dera deputy leader Sant Ramanand in Vienna. That killing triggered clashes between radical Sikh groups and Dalits in the community.This led to the Ravidassia community declaring a separate religion in 2010, and replacing the Guru Granth Sahib, which carries some verses from Guru Ravidass among others, with their own holy book called ‘Amrit Bani: Satguru Ravidass Granth’, which is focused more squarely on Ravidass's works.For the community, therefore, the PM's visit also serves as a nod to the separate identity.Modi was invited to the dera by the sect's chief by visiting him at his residence in Delhi on December 5.When the PM unveils the name ‘Sri Guru Ravidas Ji Airport, Adampur’, it fulfills a long-standing demand and honours the social reformer who emerged from a Dalit family to become an icon of equality and human dignity.BJP's strategy of Modi plus ShahFor the BJP, this focus on the Dalit demographic is key to its standing on its own in Punjab.Since its alliance with Sukhbir Singh Badal's Sikh-centric SAD ended in 2020 over the later-repealed farm laws, the Hindutva-centric BJP has worked to build an independent footprint in the Sikh-majority state. The Saffron Party has pockets of influence in some urban areas among Hindus mostly, such as Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur in Doaba, Abohar-Fazilka in Malwa, and Pathankot-Batala in Majha.In terms of vote share, the party has gained some even after the breakup with the Badals' Akali Dal.The BJP vote share was just 6.6% in the 2022 Vidhan Sabha elections, in which it contested on its own, to 18.56 percent in the 2024 parliamentary elections.By courting the Ravidassias, the BJP aims to cut further into traditional bases of the main Opposition Congress and the state's ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).But that would take a mix of moves.Professor Paramjit Singh Judge, an expert in Dalit issues, has told HT that while the Ballan dera could impact voting trends at a micro level, there is often an “illusion that that it influences the Doaba region's politics” on a macro scale.Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar, who switched to the BJP around four years ago after decades with the Congress, has said the PM's visit reflects respect for a community which, he claimed, was sidelined or misunderstood by the Congress.Beyond the Dalit outreach, just three weeks after Modi's visit, Union home minister Amit Shah is also slated to visit Punjab. That's a more direct poll outreach, with a farmers’ rally in Moga on February 22.At this rally, the BJP is aiming to mobilise nearly 1 lakh farmers, essentially gathering the agrarian community dominated by Jat Sikhs who spearheaded the 2020-21 agitation against farm laws that Modi had to repeal.“Back-to-back visits by the Prime Minister and the home minister in a month clearly reflect that the party has decided to focus on Punjab,” said a former BJP minister, who was at prep meetings for these events.This got a reaction from the ruling AAP. The state government announced that it has procured 10 acres near the dera at Ballan to establish ‘Sri Guru Ravidass Bani Adhyayan Centre’, a research facility. Finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema has said the government will launch a year-long series of state-level programmes from February 1 to commemorate the 650th birth anniversary of Guru Ravidass that's next year.