Chandigarh, November 14
All members of SAD core committee expressed their resentment against the frequent breach of coalition dharma by the BJP, party’s “junior” alliance partner in the government. The core committee members said they would not tolerate any more salvos being fired at them by the BJP’s state leaders.

The committee members expressed anguish that Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who is holding the post of Chief Parliamentary Secretary, should frequently launch outbursts against the Akalis, and said that the issue needed to be taken up with the BJP leadership. Members also expressed concern over the recent statements made by other senior leaders like former deputy Speaker Satpal Gosain and Amritsar BJP chief Naresh Sharma, and the "continuous silence being maintained by the Punjab leadership of the BJP" on the tirade launched against the SAD and its leaders by their partymen.

The core committee also decided that while the two parties would contest the local bodies election together, lack of coordination between the two parties and fissures in the alliance would bring down their prospects of winning the polls.

Sources say that the demand of the BJP for a higher seat share in the local body elections, scheduled for later this year, was dismissed. The core committee insisting that the seat sharing formula would remain the same.

“At local level, adjustments can be made and a few seats of the BJP can be exchanged, but basic seat sharing formula will not change. The party observers for the local body elections will be announced tomorrow,” revealed a core committee member.

The meeting chaired by the chief patron of SAD and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was called today immediately after he returned from his week-long China tour. With senior BJP leaders in the state hitting out at the Akali Dal and criticizing the government, the special core committee meeting was called to discuss party strategy in dealing with the issue.

Sources say that the first member to initiate the talk of “strain in ties between the coalition partners” was member of Parliament Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, who reportedly said that the issue cannot be taken lightly. Other members felt that the party cannot allow its image to be “ruined’ by their own alliance partner.

Though the chief minister refused to share as to how he proposed to remove the fissures in the SAD-BJP alliance, he tried to assure the remaining 13 members of the core committee by saying that he understood their anguish at the “strain in relations” and that he had apprise the BJP of their sentiments.