Vijay Sampla (born 6 July 1961) is an Indian politician serving as the Chairman of the

National Commission for Scheduled Castes The National Commission for Scheduled Castes is an Indian constitutional body under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India established with a view to provide safeguards against the exploitation of Sc ...

since February 2021. He is a former Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in India from 2014 to 2019 and a former

member of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

from

Hoshiarpur (Lok Sabha constituency) Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha constituency is one of the 13 Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituencies in Punjab state in northern India. Assembly segments Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha constituency comprises the following nine Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly ...

. He won the

2014 Indian general election General elections were held in India in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May 2014 to elect the members of the 16th Lok Sabha. With 834 million registered voters, they were the largest-ever elections in the world until being surpassed by the 2019 ...

as a

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

candidate. He did not contest the 2019 elections. Sampla, a leader from Punjab, has worked as farm hand, labourer and plumber earlier in his life. Sampla, who studied till Class 10, joined the party in 1998. He was the second cabinet minister from

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

after Akali Dal's

Harsimrat Kaur Badal Harsimrat Kaur Badal (born 25 July 1966) is an Indian politician and a former Union Cabinet Minister of Food Processing Industries in the Government of India and Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha from Bathinda. She is a member of Shiromani ...

. His political journey began after he was elected the Sarpanch or head of his Sofi village (

Jalandhar District Jalandhar district is a district in Doaba region of the state of Punjab, India. District headquarters is Jalandhar city. Before the Partition of India, Jalandhar was also the headquarters of the Jalandhar Division, with constituent districts J ...

). He had held several key posts in the BJP's Punjab unit. When he was a 27-year-old bereaved

dalit Dalit (from sa, दलित, dalita meaning "broken/scattered"), also previously known as untouchable, is the lowest stratum of the Caste system in India, castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold Varna (Hinduism), varna syste ...

, Sampla was trying to find his feet against the oppressive landlords of Jalandhar's Sofi Pind. His brother and he were left to fend for themselves after their father's death and Sampla went off to Saudi Arabia in 1979 to work for a plumbing company. On his swearing-in as BJP's first minister from Punjab in NDA-II, he said, "I often recall one incident that shaped my life. While I was in Saudi Arabian city of Damam, I was asked to clean human excreta and repair a bathroom. I was young and flatly refused to do the cleaning part while telling the building owner that I was a plumber. On my insistence, the man put on plastic gloves and cleaned the muck himself. It taught me the difference between oppression against dalits and the will to work", Sampla recalled.

References

India MPs 2014–2019 Living people People from Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha members from Punjab, India 1961 births Bharatiya Janata Party politicians from Punjab Narendra Modi ministry People from Jalandhar district {{PunjabIN-BJP-politician-stub