Badal clan dominated Punjab politics

Vishav Bharti

Chandigarh, April 25

Not long ago, the Badal clan made up for one-third of Punjab’s Council of Ministers but now SAD finds itself reduced to just three members in the Assembly.

How they started their career

Gurdas Singh Badal (brother) became MLA in 1967

Manpreet Singh Badal (nephew) became MLA in 1995

Sukhbir Singh Badal (son) became MP in 1996

Adesh Partap Singh Kairon (son-in-law) became MLA in 1997

Harsimrat Kaur Badal (daughter-in-law) became MP in 2009

Bikram Singh Majithia (Sukhbir’s brother-in-law) became MLA in 2007

The story of legacy of Parkash Singh Badal starts with his brother Gurdas Singh Badal, who got elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly in March 1967 on the SAD ticket and again remained member of the fifth Lok Sabha from March 15, 1971-January 18, 1977, from the Fazilka constituency. Since then there was no end to the Badal clan dominating each government.

However, the real emergence of the next generation of the clan started in mid- 1990s when, within two years, he first launched his nephew, then his son and son-in-law. In 1995, Badal fielded his nephew for the Gidderbaha byelection. In a closely fought battle, Manpreet Badal got elected. Soon after in 1996, Sukhbir Badal won from the Faridkot Lok Sabha seat. Soon after that in the 1997 Assembly elections, his son-in-law Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon also got elected on the SAD ticket.

However, Badal’s love for family did not go well with his other comrades. Akali stalwart Gurcharan Singh Tohra was the first one when in 1998, he questioned ‘his love for his son’, when Sukhbir Badal was made a Union minister bypassing many senior leaders in the NDA government. But for Badal, the priorities were clear. Till then it remained confined to inner struggle of SAD. But after 2007, when Manpreet Badal, Bikram Singh Majithia and Adesh Partap Singh Kairon were made ministers and soon after Sukhbir Badal was also made Deputy Chief Minister and Harsimrat Kaur Badal becoming MP from Bathinda, the people also started looking at it differently.

But during the SAD-BJP tenure of 2012, the way family entered into almost every business, it became the last identity and culminated in the 2022 election when the 100-year-old party was reduced to three seats in the Assembly with most of the family members, including the patriarch, being defeated.

Badal was a complex political personality. He was the successful architect of the BJP-Akali coalition. Bringing urban Punjabi Hindus closer to rural-Sikh dominated Akali politics was a rare feat achieved by him. “His control over the SGPC was a source of perennial power as well as a source of discontent among the members of community,” says Amanpreet Singh Gill, Associate Professor, SGTB Khalsa College, North Campus Delhi University.

“His love for family and family’s love for business acted more as liability than strength. The fact that he gave power to men and women toiling in the village soil can’t be denied,” he said.