After The Attack: What’s Next For Sukhbir Badal And The Akali Dal?

• Sukhbir Badal has retained control of the Akali Dal despite two successive Assembly defeats and a shrinking electoral base.

• The Badal family’s dominance has weakened the party’s cadre-based identity and eroded its panthic and agrarian credentials.

• Reviving the Akali Dal will require Sukhbir Badal to reconnect with its ideological roots and Punjab’s voters.

The dastardly attack on Sukhbir Singh Badal, the second in the last two years, has raised wider apprehension about the unfolding political situation in the state, which is poised for Assembly elections early next year. It has also brought into focus the political leadership of Sukhbir Badal and the Akali Dal, the party he leads, which is not only the oldest surviving state-level party in India but also one that has shaped the politics of the border state.

Since 2008, when Sukhbir Badal became the president of the party in January that year, he has led the party in every electoral contest as its chief strategist and vote and fund mobiliser, even as his father remained the face of the campaign. The high point of his political career, which began with his election from the Faridkot Lok Sabha constituency in 1996, was the 2012 Assembly elections, when he led the incumbent party to an unexpected victory.

As the deputy chief minister of the state, Sukhbir Badal virtually ran the day-to-day state administration. His ageing father, who preferred him to his nephew Manpreet Badal, anointed him as his successor. Sukhbir has managed to remain the top leader of the party despite leading it to two consecutive electoral debacles in the 2017 and 2022 Assembly elections. Even Parkash Singh Badal faced the ignominy of losing the last election he contested from his home turf, a year before his death.

The party managed to win only 15 and two seats, respectively, in the two elections and only one parliamentary seat in the 18th Lok Sabha. The party has been viewed as being in a state of incremental decline under his leadership.

Sukhbir Badal has faced serious challenges to his leadership over the last decade, not only from the opposition but also from within his party. There has been a challenge of another kind, highlighted by the recent attack by a Nihang at Gurdwara Mata Sahib in Maharashtra’s Nanded.

The question is to what extent Sukhbir Badal takes the blame for the loss of credibility of his own leadership and the party he controls with the help of his family members, including his wife and brother-in-law. One plausible answer would be that he shares the blame with his late father.

Parkash Singh Badal, who took oath as chief minister five times, was instrumental in bringing the moderate Akali Dal factions together against the radical Akali Dal (Amritsar) in 1994. He also deserves credit for stitching together an alliance with the BJP. The alliance and the decision to allow the BJP to join the government despite the Akali Dal winning a majority on its own helped bring communal peace to the post-militancy state.

The alliance also helped keep radical elements within the party and the Sikh community subdued or co-opted. However, the failure of Badal senior was to decimate the original character of the Akali Dal. The Akali Dal, created by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) to lead the gurdwara reform movement, was always an ideologically oriented and cadre-based party.

In order to consolidate his power base, Badal senior gradually weakened the democratic character of the party, bringing members of his kith and kin into leadership roles. The party was soon inundated with “kakas”, or sons of senior party leaders, who were not steeped in the culture of the party. Like Badal, who started his political career as a sarpanch, many Akali leaders had started as grassroots workers, participating in the Dharam Yudh Morcha and gradually rising through the leadership ranks.

Sukhbir Badal belongs to the “kaka” generation of Akali leadership, most of whom spent their time away from the state during the insurgency and, arguably, have not been political enough. Politics for him has been like the business he runs, transactional in nature.

His strategy to broaden the support base of the panthic party by inducting Hindus as party candidates in the 2012 elections might have brought electoral dividends, with 12 of them winning, but in the long term, it also led to a shift in public perception of the party—from a cadre-based party to a “catch-all” party.

A similar electoral calculation led him to be viewed as being complicit, along with his father, in allowing the Akal Takht to pardon the Dera Sacha Sauda chief, who was accused of hurting Sikh religious sentiments by appearing in attire resembling that of the 10th Guru, after receiving a written apology from him in 2015. The decision was withdrawn only after widespread opposition from the community.

The incident also revealed the undermining of the autonomy of the SGPC, considered the “mini-parliament” of the community, by the Badal leadership. The same year, there were incidents of sacrilege that led to protests by the Sikh community. The police firing on protesters at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura, which led to deaths, had a devastating effect on the panthic image of the Akali Dal, which for long had projected itself as the sole representative and custodian of the interests of the Sikh community worldwide.

Sukhbir Badal has been able to absolve himself despite presenting himself before the Akal Takht and undergoing the atonement process.

Since the Akali Dal has been under person-centred leadership, the party has also suffered irreparable electoral damage. Badal, as the leader, also takes the blame for his inability to check the spread of the drug menace in the state during the decade when the Akali Dal was in power.

Given the cost of synthetic drugs, which were introduced in a big way in the state, children of the Jat landed peasantry fell victim in large numbers—a fact recognised by the community that has been the backbone of the Akali Dal since the rise of Sant Fateh Singh as a leader.

Not only drugs, but also other mafias involved in liquor, sand and organised crime, among others, infested society on a large scale. The Badal family itself faced charges of doing nothing to check institutionalised corruption. Badal junior, being a businessman, faced charges of misusing his official position to promote his business interests in the transport, cable and hospitality sectors.

Subsequent Congress and AAP governments have been largely unsuccessful in stemming the rot. As for the agrarian sector crisis, it has been deepening ever since the Green Revolution ran its course, while promises of diversification remained on paper.

The Akali Dal, a self-styled party of farmers, initially supported the three farm laws while in the Modi government, only to oppose them and break the alliance in 2021 when it realised the anger among farmers. By that time, the damage had been done.

As of now, the Akali Dal’s claims of being both a panthic and a farmers’ party have few takers. Its avowal of standing for “Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiat” at the Moga convention in 1996 sounds hollow now.

Sukhbir Badal takes the blame as the leader presiding over the decline of the party, which has allowed the rise of separatist forces such as Waris Punjab De. The wins of the party-backed Amritpal Singh in the 2024 elections, who now heads the party from jail, are a case in point. Earlier, the Akali Dal (Amritsar), headed by Simranjit Singh Mann, had won the by-election in Sangrur.

The antecedents of candidates announced by the party for the 2027 elections have raised concerns once again about the revival of militancy. What is lacking in Sukhbir Badal’s leadership is a connection with the people, something his father had, as well as an understanding of the core principles for which the party was established.

Maybe the highly condemnable attack, which initial reports suggested was carried out by someone in his individual capacity rather than by an insurgent group, would make him introspect and reorient his leadership style. It could also prompt him to make a valiant effort to revive the erstwhile cadre-based movement party, rather than merely resorting to the old tactics of forming alliances or practicing reckless populism.

What is encouraging is the fact that the attack has been condemned by people across the political divide. The wellbeing of the mainstream Akali Dal is crucial for lasting peace and the revival of the fortunes of the beleaguered state.

(Views expressed here are strictly personal and do not represent any institution.)