Just one seat in kitty, big jolt for Akalis in Punjab

Jupinderjit Singh

Chandigarh, June 4

The Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) hopes of bouncing back in Punjab politics have been shattered as they have won only one out of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Harsimrat Kaur Badal, wife of SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, secured the Bathinda seat for the fourth consecutive time. However, her victory was hardly able to arrest the downward journey of the party that began in the 2017 assembly elections when it lost to the Congress.

“Harsimrat’s victory means the Badal family has done well; however, the SAD’s performance was poor,” said historian and noted journalist Jagtar Singh, an expert on Akali politics. He pointed out that the BJP had a higher vote share than the Akalis, 18.56 per cent compared to SAD’s 13.42 per cent, even though the BJP did not win a seat. In 2019, the SAD-BJP alliance had won 4 seats, in which each party secured two seats each. The Akalis secured a 27.76 per cent vote share. In the 2022 assembly elections, the Akalis contested in alliance with the BSP, but both were able to bag only 3 out of 117 seats.

Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal led the election campaign this time on his own, since the April 2023 death of his father and five-time CM, Parkash Singh Badal. Sukhbir seemed to have made a good beginning when he brought back rebel senior leaders such as Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Jagir Kaur back into the party’s fold just before the elections. However, he cold-shouldered the Dhindsas for the Sangrur ticket, choosing Iqbal Singh Jhunda over Dhindsa, who came in fifth in the elections.