Bhagwant Mannਭਗਵੰਤ ਮਾਨ

Early life

Bhagwant Singh Mann was born on 17 October 1973 in the village of Satoj in Sunam tehsil of Sangrur district, Punjab, into a Sikh family. He studied at the government school in Chemma village, Sunam, and later attended Shaheed Udham Singh Government College in Sunam, where he first took the stage at youth festivals and inter-college competitions.

Comedy career

Mann found his calling in comedy. He won two gold medals at a Punjabi University, Patiala competition and built routines satirising Indian politics, business and sport. His first comedy album was recorded with fellow comedian Jagtar Jaggi, and together they made the television show Jugnu Kehnda Hai for Alpha ETC Punjabi. After the duo parted ways, Mann teamed up with Rana Ranbir for Jugnu Mast Mast, another hit on the same channel. In 2006, Mann and Jaggi reunited for a Canada and England tour with their show No Life With Wife. His appearance on Star Plus's The Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2008 made him a household name across India. He also acted in the National Award-winning film Main Maa Punjab Dee, directed by Balwant Dullat, and in Jugnu Hazir Hai on MH One. Known to fans as ‘Jugnu’ and the ‘Comedy King’, his entertainment career ran from 1992 until he left the stage for politics in 2015.

Entry into politics

In early 2011, at the peak of his comedy career, Mann joined Manpreet Singh Badal's People's Party of Punjab. He contested the 2012 assembly election from Lehra but lost. In March 2014 he joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and was fielded from the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat.

Member of Parliament, 2014–2022

Mann won the 2014 general election from Sangrur with 533,237 votes, defeating former union minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa by 211,721 votes. He was re-elected in 2019 with 413,561 votes and a margin of 110,211, becoming AAP's only member in the Lok Sabha. In January 2019 he was appointed convener of AAP's Punjab unit, a post he held until November 2024. He lost the 2017 Punjab assembly election from Jalalabad to Sukhbir Singh Badal by about 18,500 votes. On 14 March 2022, two days before becoming chief minister, he resigned his Sangrur parliamentary seat.

Chief Minister of Punjab

On 18 January 2022, AAP named Mann its chief ministerial candidate for Punjab after a public poll that weighed overwhelmingly in his favour. He won the Dhuri assembly seat by 58,206 votes, and AAP swept 92 of Punjab's 117 seats. Mann took oath as the 17th Chief Minister of Punjab on 16 March 2022 at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. In his first days he moved to end VIP culture, withdrawing police security from 122 former MLAs and ministers and reassigning 384 policemen to public duty. His first cabinet meeting announced 25,000 government job openings, including 10,000 in the Punjab Police, and a plan to regularise 35,000 contractual employees. Later measures included teacher pay under the UGC's Seventh Pay Commission, a Volvo bus service between IGI Airport and Punjab cities at half the private operators' fares, and a November 2022 policy requiring Punjabi to be prominent on all public signboards.

Controversies

In 2026, Mann was drawn into a dispute with the Akal Takht over a viral video that allegedly showed him behaving disrespectfully toward Sikh religious imagery. Mann denied he was the person in the video and maintained the footage was fake; the dispute continued over competing forensic examinations, and on 15 June 2026 the Akal Takht declared him ‘Guru Dokhi’ and ‘Khalsa Panth Virodhi’, saying he had misled the religious authorities. Haryana Police later arrested two men over an alleged attempt to procure a fabricated forensic report in the case.