WHY SUKHBIR BROKE FREE

On October 1, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal launched tractor rallies to Chandigarh from the three holiest seats of Sikhism in Punjab— Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib in Anandpur Sahib, Akal Takht Sahib in Amritsar and Takht Sri Damdama Sahib in Talwandi Sabo—against the Centre’s new farm laws, over which his party walked out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on September 26.

- Anilesh S. Mahajan

The less-than-expected attendance at the rallies would have perhaps got Badal thinking about the protracted battle that lies ahead—of carving out a distinct space for the SAD in Punjab outside the NDA umbrella.

With the SAD-BJP alliance— launched in 1996 and at one point extolled by SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal as a ‘nail and skin’ bond— collapsing, this is a critical time for Sukhbir to plan his party’s revival among Sikh farmers and the party’s eroding ‘panthic’ base, voters who take their cues from the Sikh religious establishment.

FARMERS’ CAUSE

The journey, though, is expected to be far from smooth. To begin with, while Badal is trying to rally the farmers, their unions in Punjab would be wary of his leadership. As the ruling Congress points out, the SAD had aggressively supported the farm ordinances as recently as early September. “You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” says Manpreet Badal, Sukhbir’s cousin and Punjab finance minister. “Feeling the political ground slipping, he (Sukhbir) has changed sides.”

Badal says his wife Harsimrat Kaur, who quit as Union minister for food processing on September 17, had brought up the contentious issues in the farm ordinances in the Union cabinet and was assured that suggestions from farmer organisations would be incorporated. “It is only when the Union government decided to bulldoze us that we decided to quit [the NDA],” Badal told India today. He argued that the NDA no longer offered a platform to debate issues. “Since 2018, when Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam Party) quit, the NDA has had no convenor,” Badal said.