Till Tuesday, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) leaders seemed to be collectively hallucinating that Akali supremo Sukhbir Singh Badal will walk out of his ivory tower, rise like a phoenix and help revive their party that is in tatters. But after the poor performance of the party in the just concluded 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a group of top Akali leaders have come out of their delusion and passed a resolution that calls for his resignation as party chief.
Even though there were enough indications that all was not well for the eponymous Akalis Dal, the Badals turned a blind eye to all of those signals beginning with the first incident of be-adbi (religious sacrilege) in 2015, and the subsequent unrest against the Badals. And since the Badals -- seven members of their extended family -- remained at the helm of Punjab politics, the voters of Punjab turned their ire towards the family, and through the family to the party they belonged to.
The resentment against the Badals created a political vacuum in the state. That was the time when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), barely a three-year-old political outfit, started finding acceptance among the Punjabis, especially the rural disgruntled jobless youth. These men belonged to families who traditionally voted for the Akali Dal (Badal).
Two years later Sukhbir said, “Daddy wants me to continue”
Two years later, in the 2017 Punjab Assembly elections, Congress won 77 seats, AAP 20 and Akali Dal (B) won 15 seats. Immediately after the election debacle, Akali veteran Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, who was the second senior-most leader after Parkash Singh Badal, had asked Sukhbir Singh Badal to step down as Akali supremo. But Sukhbir had then told Dhindsa, “Daddy wants me to continue.” That particular conversation was the beginning of the discord among the top Akali leaders regarding who should lead the party. However, the Badal family chose to ignore this discord and blamed some of these leaders for going against the core principles of the party and expelled them.
A year later, in 2018, three expelled leaders of Shiromani Akali Dal (B) – Ranjit Singh Brahmpura, Rattan Singh Ajnala, and Sewa Singh Sekhwan – formed a separate political outfit called Shiromani Akali Dal (Taksali). With them, they took a chunk of the Akali cadre.
In 2020, Akalis still hallucinated that “all was well”
In July 2020, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa formed another splinter group called Shiromani Akali Dal (Democratic). In April 2021, the two political outfits joined hands to form Akali Dal Samyukt. But it’s not as though dissidence in Akali Dal (B) had come to an end. All this while, AAP was silently preparing ground for itself in Punjab using different monikers – farmers, activists, student activists, social workers et al.
In September 2020, NDA introduced the three controversial farm laws against which there was a huge farmers’ agitation led mostly by the farmers of Punjab. Fearing that this may result in the loss of the Akali vote bank, the Akali Dal (Badal) culled the ties with the BJP assuming that the Punjab farmers, who had been Akali sympathisers till now were still intact as their vote bank not realising that the erosion of their cadres and core vote bank had started taking place after the 2015 be-adbi incident.
Lambi, an eye-opener
I was able to gauge the deep inroads AAP had made in Punjab only after visiting Lambi Assembly seat before March 2022 Punjab Assembly polls, which was represented a record five times by none other than Parkash Singh Badal. I asked a college-going youngster, “Which way is the wind blowing?” He said, “In Lambi, it’s the same as it is in the entire state.” Before I left, he smiled, “This time the wind will even uproot the tallest tree.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” He said, “Give me your phone number, I will call you on March 22.”
A few moments later I saw a group of about 200-strong Akali supporters were out on a campaign trail accompanying Sukhbir Badal’s daughter Harkirat Kaur on a door-to-door campaign for Parkash Singh Badal. At Kheowali village, they met the AAP candidate Jagmeet Singh Khudian’s much smaller unit of about 20 AAP supporters. A little later, from among those 200 Akali workers about a quarter of them started retreating one-by-one. Out of curiosity, I too joined them only to realise that they were walking in the opposite direction towards Mr Khudian’s campaign party and soon joined them.
On March 22, when the election results were announced AAP won a record 92 seats in an assembly of 117 and Akali Dal was reduced to 3 MLAs. Sukhbir Singh Badal, Parkash Singh Badal and all the who’s who of Akali Dal and Punjab politics lost elections. That’s when I got a call from the youngster from Lambi, “Brother, you remember me! Didn’t I tell you that the tallest tree will be uprooted?”
After the Assembly polls debacle, a party’s core fact-finding panel authorised Sukhbir Singh Badal to restructure the party as per the Jhunda committee report which looked into the causes that led to the party’s poor performance. Even as the so-called restructuring of the party took place, dissidence in the party continued and in November 2022, Akali Dal (B) even expelled former SGPC chief Jagir Kaur from the party. However, she later rejoined the party this year.
Nail in the coffin: 2024 and rise of radicals
The nail in the coffin was the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in which SAD(B) won just one out of the 13 seats and their candidates lost their security deposits in 10 seats. In several TV broadcast shows across Punjab, experts compared votes polled to Akali Dal with the NOTA. While Akalis have lost most of their cadre to the AAP across Punjab, in Khadoor Sahib, and Faridkot Lok Sabha segments they have lost their base to the radical forces. Which is why Amritpal won the Khadoor Sahib Lok Sabha seat and Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa won Faridkot. In Khadoor Sahib, before the election results, there was a quiet unanimity even among the Congress, Akali, and AAP leaders that Amritpal will win the seat. Faridkot, which is not so much a hotbed of radical forces, also shocked many when Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, the son of Indira Gandhi’s bodyguard and assassin Beant Singh, won from there. After all, Faridkot is a constituency that has been represented by Sukhbir Singh Badal on three occasions and once by Parkash Singh Badal in the Lok Sabha and that clearly explains that Akalis have lost ground to the radical forces in these two Lok Sabha seats.
Molten state of Punjab politics & BJP
Interestingly, Amritpal Singh’s candidature was announced by none other than advocate Rajdev Singh Khalsa who had joined the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat — the Sikh wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) way back in 2015. This means that with the decline of the Akali Dal and the emergence of the AAP, the BJP is also trying to use the molten state Punjab politics is in, through Congress dissidents, Akali dissidents, and even the AAP dissidents. And the likes of Rajdev Singh Khalsa, once part of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat announcing Amritpal’s candidature as an Independent, tell the complete story. While Sukhbir Singh Badal and his fewer-than-before acolytes are still hallucinating the revival of Akali Dal under his leadership, the political universe of Punjab is dynamic and slippery where one may make mistakes but Sukhbir Singh Badal and Akali Dal (Badal) are being persistent at it.
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