The speculation of an alliance between the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Punjab has come to an end. BJP Punjab state in-charge Vijay Rupani made it clear that the party will contest alone on all the seats. On the other hand, after the meeting of district heads in Chandigarh, Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal said that the SAD’s alliance is with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). “There is no question of going with the BJP.”
After the appointment of Sunil Jakhar as the head of the Punjab BJP, speculation was raised regarding Akali Dal and the BJP realliance. Following the Akali Dal’s meeting of all district heads, Halka in-charges and senior leaders at the party headquarters in Chandigarh, speculations were rife that the two parties would forge an alliance again.
But the leaders of both parties have denied this possibility. SAD broke the alliance with BJP in September 2020 in protest against agricultural laws. It is believed that after the death of former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, the ground for the BJP-Akali alliance was being prepared. It has become more clear from the results of Jalandhar’s by-election that both parties cannot survive without each other. Harsimrat Kaur Badal and her husband Sukhbir Badal are the only Lok Sabha members from the Akali Dal. There has not been an Akali Dal MP the Rajya Sabha since 2020 when Harsimrat, responsible for the food processing ministry in the Modi government since 2014, resigned from the cabinet after seeing farmers’ displeasure over three agricultural laws. However, the Akali Dal failed to take any political advantage of this resignation.
It had its weakest-ever performance in the 2022 assembly elections when only three of its MLAs won and became part of the 117-member Punjab assembly. After this, the Akali Dal was defeated in the two Lok Sabha by-elections as well.