On Saturday, Sukhbir Singh Badal led Shiromani Akali Dal-Badal to expel his brother-in-law Adesh Partap Singh Kairon from the party's primary membership for alleged “anti-party activities”.
Kairon is the husband of Sukhbir’s sister Parneet Kaur. More than that, he is the grandson of the famous and legendary former Chief Minister of Punjab, Partap Singh Kairon. Partap Singh Kairon was the Congress Chief Minister and a diehard opponent of the Shiromani Akali Dal.
When Adesh married Parneet in 1984, it was a marriage between two rival political families. Parneet’s father and former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was in jail at the time of her marriage.
When the Akalis under the leadership of the senior Badal returned to electoral politics and eventually to power in 1997, Adesh became a minister for the first time in the Akali government, although he came from a distinguished Congress family, which produced an iconic Chief Minister of the state.
Sukhbir was not very active in state politics those days and was just cutting his teeth. He became an MP and mostly remained in Delhi, focusing more on his business. At one time it was believed, rather it was agreed in the Badal family, that the successor in state politics to the senior Badal would not be his son, Sukhbir but his nephew Manpreet Singh Badal. He parted ways with the Akali Dal and his uncle in 2010 and formed a separate People’s Party of Punjab.
Later he joined Congress but is now in the BJP, which he joined last year. Kairon was more closer to Manpreet than Sukhbir.
Kairon and Sukhbir’s relationship was not the best of relationships between the two brothers-in-law. Both the senior Badal and his wife Ms Surinder Kaur Badal had a soft corner for their son-in-law but certainly not at the cost of the interest of their son. After Ms Badal passed away, the senior Badal still watched his son-in-law’s interest.
In the meantime, Sukhbir’s other brother-in-law, his wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s brother Bikram Singh Majithia, coming from yet another influential political family of Majithia Sardars, assumed an important role in the party. Being young and combative, he soon started assuming a dominant role in the party.
When the Badal family faced a personal and political onslaught from Capt Amarinder Singh in 2002, he was at the forefront of maintaining the morale of the party and its cadres.
However, neither senior Badal nor his wife were very fond of Majithia as their preference remained for their son-in-law, Kairon.
Compared to the combative and politically aggressive approach of Majithia, Kairon is more discreet and more restrained. He mostly confined his political activity within his Patti assembly segment in the Tarn Taran district.
Sukhbir has always had greater fondness for Majithia than Kairon, something that was not liked much by his parents. And Kairon didn’t have much fondness for Sukhbir either. Indifference, rather the aversion, was always mutual and reciprocal.
After the passing away of senior Badal, the only link between the two families also finished.
Kairon, given the strong and powerful pedigree he has, has his own strong opinions and beliefs. The latest trigger came in the Khadoor Sahib parliamentary constituency, where the Shiromani Akali Dal-Badal is faced with a serious challenge from a young radical Amritpal Singh.
The Akali candidate Virsa Singh Valtoha reportedly complained against Kairon that he was resorting to anti-party activities. And the party took a summary decision to expel him from the primary membership.
It rarely happens in any party that such strong action is taken against a senior leader so spontaneously and so summarily. And that too when the leader involved is the brother-in-law of the party president. Kairon was not served any notice even.
Badals and Kairons had always taken a separate, rather opposite, political course. Adesh Partap was the first “Kairon” from Partap Singh Kairon’s family to have joined the Shiromani Akali Dal. The rivalry has come full circle now. The two families have fallen politically apart, after a long time.
Kairon’s future course of action will be keenly and carefully watched. He lost two consecutive elections in 2017 and 2022. And before that, in 2012, he had barely managed to win by a margin of just 60 votes.
At stake is not just his political future, but a great political legacy he inherits.
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