Chandigarh, Jan. 17 -- : In a significant development for the saffron party, former Faridkot MP Jagmeet Singh Brar, his brother and ex-Kotkapura MLA, Ripjeet Singh Brar, former officer on special duty (OSD) to Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann, Onkar Singh Sidhu, and Shiromani Akali Dal (Punar Surjit) general secretary Charanjit Singh Brar on Friday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The leaders were inducted into the BJP in the presence of Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini, Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar, Union minister of state for railways Ravneet Singh Bittu, and working president of the BJP Ashwani Sharma. Jagmeet Singh Brar (68), a former Faridkot MP, has had a long and chequered political career spanning several parties. Though his father was associated with the Shiromani Akali Dal, Brar began his political career with the Congress. He rose to prominence after defeating Sukhbir Singh Badal in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from Faridkot, when the SAD-BJP alliance was in power in Punjab under then chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. Brar, a party hopper, had contested 11 elections so far, including eight Lok Sabha polls, but has won only twice - in 1992 and 1999. He was expelled from the Congress in 2016, following which he briefly served as president of the Punjab unit of the Trinamool Congress before quitting the party in 2018. In 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, he joined the Shiromani Akali Dal. In the 2022 assembly elections, Brar contested from the Maur constituency on an SAD ticket but lost his security deposit. He was expelled from the Akali Dal in December 2022 for alleged anti-party activities. After remaining politically inactive for over three years, Brar has now joined the BJP. His younger brother, Ripjeet Singh Brar, who won the Kotkapura assembly seat in 2007 on a Congress ticket, had also joined the SAD along with Jagmeet Brar in 2019 and exited the party in 2022. Chanranjit Brar, who hailed from a Taksali Akali family, had deserted SAD to join Manpreet Badal-led People's Party of Punjab but later returned to SAD. In 2024, he left SAD and became a founding member of Akali Dal (Punar Surjit). Onkar, an OSD to CM Mann, used to look after the Dhuri constituency represented by the CM, but was reportedly removed as an OSD on the instructions of the party high command. Welcoming the new entrants, Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini said the BJP family was continuously expanding and claimed that people across states had faith in the party's governance model. Highlighting what he described as the "Haryana model", Saini said the BJP government in Haryana had made 217 promises in its 2024 manifesto, of which 53 had already been fulfilled, while the remaining 163 would be completed by the end of the current financial year. Saini claimed that the sense of insecurity among the people of Punjab is steadily increasing. He alleged that law and order in Punjab has completely collapsed under the AAP government. Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar said the party welcomed all leaders and said, "People in Punjab are increasingly looking towards the BJP for progress and stability. The BJP is the only party capable of putting Punjab back on the path of development"....