And now, though Prakash Singh Badal is the chief minister, and the party’s chief ministerial candidate during the elections too, the architect of the stunning victory is undoubtedly junior Badal. He consciously steered the party away from its old mould of ‘panth’, identity and power patronage to a modern, youth oriented outfit with an emphasis on governance reforms, infrastructure, power and populist welfare such as free water and electricity and subsidised atta and daal. He promised free laptops to class 12 students, cycles for class 9 and 10 girls and free education upto graduation for them. The buzz word was ‘development for all’ and Sukhbir’s moves in this direction began from the second year of the Akali’s previous tenure when he began picking potential candidates and made many of them ‘constituency incharge’ to see what they could do at the grassroot level. Money was allocated freely for projects such a village road here, classrooms for a school building, waterworks in villages, or community centres. During the election campaign villagers were reminded with the help of meticulously maintained figures what all had been allocated for which projects in their respective villages. It drove home the message.
He also played the master stroke of propping up some Congress rebels in key constituencies, who ate into the Congress vote bank. Alliance partner BJP was persuaded to drop some sitting legislators and the party eventually fielded nine new faces. It helped it to win 12 of the 23 seats on it contested.