Amit Shah to visit Punjab on Tuesday as anger over Jhota killing simmers

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will visit Punjab on Tuesday, 20 October, BJP leader Ravneet Singh Bittu said on Sunday, his second trip to the state in less than a month.

“Punjab welcomes Hon’ble Union Home Minister Shri @AmitShah Ji on his visit to Punjab on 20th October,” Bittu wrote on X. He did not say where Shah would go or what he would do.

Bittu tied the visit to the drug problem the BJP has made the centre of its campaign against the Aam Aadmi Party government in Chandigarh. Punjab, he said, needed decisive action and strong leadership to protect its young people. “Let us unite to save Punjab’s youth and reclaim Punjab’s future,” he wrote, adding that the AAP government had lost its mandate well before its term ends.

Shah was last in the state on 30 September, when he addressed a rally in Jalandhar to close the BJP’s “Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra”, which had begun on 18 September.

Mansa in the background

The visit comes as protests continue in Mansa over the killing of anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota, who was shot dead in broad daylight on 13 October inside a medical store in a crowded market. Jhota had objected to chemists selling addictive substances. The store owner, Ashwani Kumar, is accused of opening fire after Jhota confronted him for selling such drugs to an elderly man. Police arrested him in Salasar, Rajasthan.

On Friday, Shah said the Centre would seek the Punjab government’s response on Jhota’s killing and on a separate case in Dirba, where a father allegedly took poison under pressure.