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.
This story is from the October 19, 2020 edition of India Today.
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This story is from the October 19, 2020 edition of India Today.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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