The Shiromani Akali Dal may have managed to wriggle out of the difficult by-elections on account of its president Sukhbir Singh Badal having been declared a ‘Tankhaiah’, this decision will prove detrimental to the party’s long term interests.
In an unprecedented and unusual decision, the Shiromani Akali Dal-Badal today decided not to contest the by-election in four assembly segments of Punjab scheduled on November 13.
The core committee of the party, which met on Thursday, decided that since party president Sukhbir Singh Badal will not be able to campaign owing to the Akal Takhat having declared him a ‘Tankhaia’ (guilty of religious misconduct), it will not field any candidate in any of the four constituencies.
This is but obvious that the party has tried to avoid the contest on the pretext of the Akal Takhat declaring Sukhbir guilty and forbidding him from any political activity.
In any case, Sukhbir has not resorted to any political activity since August 30, the day when he was declared a ‘Tankhaia’. The party had appointed Balwinder Singh Bhunder as the working president, who is overseeing the party activities right now.
The party is not solely dependent on Sukhbir for campaigning. It only chose an easy way out since it did not expect to win any of the four assembly segments going for by-polls on November 13.
Winning aside, the party was not sure it could save the security deposit in any of the four assembly segments, as it had been pushed to third and fourth places in almost all the segments.
This decision will further marginalize the party with its cadre likely to defect to other parties. The biggest example was its senior leader and former minister Sohan Singh Thandal defecting to the Bharatiya Janata Party today, after attending the core committee meeting of the Akali Dal yesterday.
Thandal is likely to be the BJP candidate from the Chabbewal assembly segment, which is also going for by-election on November 13. There will be more cases where prominent leaders and workers switch to other parties.
In fact, two of the four BJP candidates contesting the by-election are recent deserters from the Akali Dal only. And suppose Manpreet Badal’s past Akali association is included. In that case, he is the third former Akali candidate fighting on the BJP ticket, although he had left the Akali Dal ten years ago, formed his own party and later joined the Congress, from where he finally defected to the BJP.
Whosoever advised Sukhbir Badal to skip the by-elections, has done him and the party no good. No matter what the state of the party may be, even if all its candidates would have lost the security deposit, at least it would have been in the contest. By opting out, the party has conceded its entire space to other rival parties, including the ‘Sudhar Lehar’, a group of Akali dissidents including Prem Singh Chandumajra, Bibi Jagir Kaur, Surjit Singh Rakhra, Gurpartap Singh Wadala, Parminder Singh Dhindsa and others.
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