SAD’s BSP tie up for polls won’t save Akalis

By Ajay Jha

The Shiromani Akali Dal’s desperate ploy of snapping its decades’ old ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party and taking the Bahujan Samaj Party on as a junior partner to get the upper hand in the upcoming Punjab assembly elections may be a fool’s gambit. Especially, if one goes by a recently announced opinion poll which says the SAD-BSP alliance may end up winning no more than 16 to 24 seats in the upcoming assembly polls.

If the predictions of the election throwing up a hung assembly are realised, the best that the SAD-BSP alliance can hope for is to play the role of a kingmaker. More so, as the Aam Aadmi Party and the state’s ruling Congress party are projected as the main protagonists in the close fight to emerge as the single largest party in the 117-member assembly.

The Akalis and BJP formed an alliance in 1997 and contested five assembly elections as allies with mixed results, winning thrice and losing twice, the last being the 2017 elections in which the Akalis won 15 and the BJP won three seats. They were always seen as the natural allies and complemented each other. While the Akalis had their base amongst the state’s majority Sikh voters, especially those living in rural areas, BJP was seen as a pro-Hindu party, popular amongst the Hindu voters based in urban areas. The Akali Dal had been a partner in all governments formed by the BJP at the centre, while the BJP played a junior partner’s role in the Akali Dal-led governments in the state. They were considered made for each other. The discord, however, erupted over the farm laws as the Akali Dal opted to quit the Narendra Modi government and broke its ties with the BJP in September last year to appease its voters with an eye on 2022 assembly elections.

The idea behind the move was to duck farmers’ anger with the Modi government. The ploy, however, seems to have failed to work on the ground. Going back to the BJP with the deadlock continuing on the farm laws, the Akali Dal has opted to ally with the BSP, offering the erstwhile ruling party of Uttar Pradesh, ranked as one of the national parties, the option to contest 20 seats. The idea behind the Akali leadership getting cosy with the BSP was to attract the 31.9 per cent Dalit voters of Punjab. The plan looks as if it is on the verge of failing since the Congress party opted to cock a snook at its arch-rival Akali Dal in Punjab, by appointing a Dalit Sikh in Charanjit Singh Channi as its new chief minister. The Akalis’ error of judgement lies in choosing to ignore the fact that the BSP was never a preferred party of Punjabi Dalits as its supremo Mayawati has always been seen as an outsider.

While BSP founder Kanshi Ram may have been a Punjabi Dalit, whatever traction the BSP held in Punjab died with Kanshi Ram’s demise in 2006 and allegations by Kanshi Ram’s family that towards the end of his life, he was kept captive by Mayawati and as yet unproven allegations that his death was unnatural as Mayawati had bigger ambitions which she could not have achieved while her mentor was around.

BSP, under Kanshi Ram, had announced its arrival in Punjab politics with a big bang in the 1992 elections when it won nine seats and emerged as the second-largest party in the state assembly after the Congress party, racing ahead of the Akali Dal and the BJP. It was an encouraging display by a party that had started from scratch in 1985 by an ambitious Kanshi Ram who had no political experience.

BSP’s graph came down in 1997 when it ended up winning just two seats, and that was the last time the BSP marked its presence in the state assembly. Since then the party has contested all four elections without winning a single seat.

Even before the 2022 elections were formally announced, BSP had started proving liability for the Akali Dal, which happened to be India’s second oldest party after the Congress party. The party came into being in 1920. Akali Dal’s graph, however, came down substantially over the past few years after its top leadership was accused of being involved in rampant corruption, including giving patronage to the drug smugglers during its last tenure in the office between 2007 and 2017.

The upcoming polls are crucial for Sukhbir Singh Badal, the Akali Dal president, who is projected as the chief ministerial candidate of the SAD-BSP alliance. His legendary father Parkash Singh Badal, who served as the Punjab chief minister for five terms, has taken a backseat due to his old age.

The Akali Dal rank and file are not happy with the manner in which the Badal family has captured a 101-yearold party and used its goodwill to emerge as one of the richest political clans of India. How the Akali Dal had propagated dynastic rule was reflected when Parkash Singh Badal was serving as the chief minister, his son Sukhbir Singh Badal as t