Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga is contesting from Hari Nagar. Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga is contesting from Hari Nagar.

A Swayamsevak since his teens, an Art of Living follower and founder of a T-shirt brand, Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (34) first made headlines when he attacked Prashant Bhushan over a statement by the lawyer, calling for a referendum on Kashmir, in October 2011.

While the attack was at the time condemned by top BJP leadership, Bagga remains unrepentant. “The case is in court so I cannot comment much on it; but even today, if someone says Kashmir should be given to Pakistan, people will do the same to him,” he told The Indian Express, a day after he was picked by BJP to fight the Hari Nagar seat in the polls.

A Delhi BJP spokesperson since 2017, Bagga had been seeking a ticket from Tilak Nagar but in vain, party sources said. It was only when the Shiromani Akali Dal snapped ties with BJP in Delhi that Bagga’s fortunes turned. Within seconds of the post-midnight announcement, he had posted a rap song on Twitter — ‘Bagga, Bagga Har Jagah’ — to “thank” everyone.

Thanks everyone pic.twitter.com/3jqhAFUOEN — Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga (@TajinderBagga) January 20, 2020

Bagga, who started his political career with the relatively unknown Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena (BSKS), has 6.5 lakh followers on Twitter, where he is often called out for posting virulent, fake or misleading tweets. Most recently, he had rallied his followers to boycott Deepika Padukone’s Chhapaak after her JNU visit.

In 2011, he barged into India Habitat Centre and disrupted the launch of author Arundhati Roy’s book, calling her work “anti-Army and pro-Kashmir azadi”. He had also heckled Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani at an event in 2012. His outfit also defaced walls around the Pakistan High Commission and pasted posters demanding freedom for Balochistan.

In 2015, his Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena launched an online news and opinion blog, NaMo Patrika, dedicated to PM Narendra Modi. The same year, he was on the team of BJP’s social media influencers who got a chance to meet Modi at his official residence. Two years later, he was appointed as the party spokesperson ahead of the MCD polls.

“I’ve always taken stand for the country. I sat on a hunger strike for eight days to get justice for the December 2012 rape victim and another hunger strike to demand action against culprits of the 1984 Sikh massacre,” he said.

Party insiders said his “currency within the BJP increased” after he went to West Bengal in 2019 and was among the BJP workers detained by the West Bengal police.

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