Sukhbir Badal Resigns As Shiromani Akali Dal Chief; Elections For New President Likely To Be Held In December

Chandigarh: Sukhbir Badal on Saturday resigned as president of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to pave the way for the election of the party’s new president; The elections for the said post are due next month. Founded in 1920, the SAD is the country's second oldest political party after Congress. Prior to Sukhbir, his father Parkash Singh Badal, an 11-time MLA and five-term chief minister, remained party’s chief for 12 years.

Sukhbir was SAD chief since 2008 and it was under his leadership that the party had formed government for two terms in a row in 2012, though the party was on a constant slide losing all the subsequent polls and has just three legislators in the House of 117 members in the Punjab assembly as on today.

Notably, Akal Takht - the supreme temporal seat of the Sikhs – had also declared Sukhbir Bada "tankhaiya" (guilty of religious misconduct) on August 30, 2024, and barred him from contesting elections for the alleged "mistakes" committed by his party and government during its rule from 2007 to 2017.

These "mistakes", alleged by rebel SAD leaders, included revocation of the blasphemy case against Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh for imitating Guru Gobind Singh in 2007, the failure to punish perpetrators of the Bargari sacrilege and police officials for the Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan firing incidents, appointment of controversial IPS officer Sumedh Saini as Punjab DGP besides giving Farzana Alam, the wife of controversial police officer Izhar Alam, the party ticket in the 2012 assembly polls.

It may be recalled that earlier this year, several of senior Akali leaders including Bibi Jagir Kaur, former MP Prem Singh Chandumajra, former ministers Parminder Singh Dhindsa, Sikander Singh Maluka and Surjit Singh Rakhra had rebelled against Sukhbir and formed a 13-member praesidium to strengthen the ’Shiromani Akali Dal Sudhar Lehar (SAD reform movement)’ following the party’s successive poll debacles starting with assembly polls in 2017; SAD’s vote share had fallen to 13.5% from 18.5% in 2022 state polls in which the party won three seats in the 117-member state assembly.

Sukhbir had on August 29, lat appointed senior party leader Balwinder Singh Bhundar as working president of the party. Bhundar has convened an emergency meeting of the working committee on November 18 here, which would consider Sukhbir’s resignation and chart out the next course of action, including conduct of elections for the new president of the party.

Senior SAD leader Daljit Singh Cheema said the last election to the post of the president and the organisational structure of the party was held on December 14, 2019. He said as the elections were due next month, Sukhbir had chosen to resign to clear the way for the conduct of this exercise.