If a tea-seller can become India’s Prime Minister, why can’t a plumber become a minister? Lo and behold! For this is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just done in his Nov. 9 Cabinet expansion-cum-reshuffle.

Vijay Sampla, who worked as an assistant plumber in Saudi Arabia from 1992 to 1997, was among the 22 new ministers inducted by Modi in his council of ministers last Sunday. This is how Modi functions. He picks up uncut diamonds and polishes these in his own way. Sampla, 52, comes from a poor “dalit” family in Punjab. He was forced to pick up petty jobs involving hard labor after the death of his father, the family’s sole breadwinner.

Life took a happy turn for Sampla and his family in 1992 when he moved to Saudi Arabia to work as a plumber. Life was hard and hectic for him but the money was better than what he managed in India. In five years, Sampla had saved enough and returned to his native village in Jalamdhar. In 1998 Sampla became the “sarpanch” (headman) of his Sofi village, at a time when Modi was in-charge of Punjab affairs for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is likely that Sampla might have run into Modi during Modi’s Punjab stint but even if he had it is extremely unlikely that he would have remembered a village headman.

Years on Modi’s political graphs went up steadily within the BJP rank and file, courtesy his benefactor L.K. Advani. Modi continued with his upward political journey and had three stints as chief minister of Gujarat. In contrast, Sampla’s political journey continued with fits and starts. He tried his best to secure the party’s nomination as a candidate for Punjab assembly elections in 2012, but failed.

In the year 2014 while India witnessed the meteoric rise of Modi, Dame Luck smiled on Sampla as well. Sampla contested the April-May general election from the Hoshiarpur reserved seat and won, defeating his nearest rival from the Congress party.

Six months after winning the Lok Sabha election, Sampla, the first time MP, is now the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment. Sampla seems to be a key man in Modi’s scheme of things in Punjab, the north Indian food basket state of India, which is scheduled to have assembly elections in 2017. Though good three years are left for the next assembly elections in Punjab, Modi seems to have picked his man and put him in his council of ministers possibly to groom him for a bigger role in Punjab. The USP of Sampla is that he is a “dalit” and belongs to the influential Ravidassia sect in Punjab. Modi may well project him as a “dalit” leader and a probable chief minister of Punjab.

This is what Modi has done in Haryana and Maharashtra where his handpicked chief ministers — Madanlal Khattar and Devendra Phadnavis respectively — have risen from humble background. Sampla’s rise may also be an alarm bell for the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which has been ruling Punjab along with the BJP since 2007.

Things are not rosy between the BJP and its longtime ally SAD. Interestingly the two parties had contested the Haryana assembly polls against each other. Modi would inevitably be dumping SAD in the next assembly elections in Punjab, just as he dropped Shiv Sena like a hot potato in Maharashtra. The BJP is going it alone in the November-December assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir also.

What will be interesting to watch is how Modi uses his latest “dalit” card Vijay Sampla in two key state assembly polls next year — Delhi and Bihar. One may see Modi pitching Sampla in election campaigns in Delhi and Bihar, both having sizable “dalit” votes. In fact Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had made impressive forays in Punjab and Delhi in last one decade because of the sizable “dalit” vote bank, but in the April-May general elections she ended with zero seats though her party polled more than 20 per cent votes.

Yet another fact should not go unnoticed. Modi picked Sampla in his council of ministers while ignoring the high-profile BJP leader and famous Bollywood star Vinod Khanna, who is also an MP from Punjab. Coming back to Sampla and his Saudi Arabia connection, it will be interesting to see when he undertakes an official trip to Saudi Arabia as Modi’s minister and how this visit pans out.