Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) core committee has convened a meeting Friday to deliberate a potential alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the upcoming parliamentary elections. The meeting comes a day before party chief and Ferozepur MP Sukhbir Singh Badal is expected to visit Delhi for negotiations with BJP leaders.
On Wednesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in an interview with News 18, said that the BJP and the SAD were negotiating regarding a possible tie-up ahead of the parliamentary elections. The position will be clear in the coming days, Shah said, adding that currently, the round of offers and counter-offers was ongoing between the parties.
In the interview, Shah said the BJP was trying to bring together all former allies back into the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) without compromising on the prestige and honour of his party.
The voting for Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats will be held in the last phase on 1 June.
Apart from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has declared eight candidates, no other party in Punjab has declared candidates for any seat.
On Thursday, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann posted on the social media platform X that his party will declare the remaining five candidates next week. The names of the eight candidates were declared on 14 March.
Meanwhile, highly placed sources in the SAD told ThePrint that discussions on seat-sharing arrangements with the BJP were still ongoing. “While the BJP wants at least five of the 13 seats, the SAD wants to continue with the old arrangement of giving the BJP only three seats,” a senior leader told ThePrint.
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Seat-sharing arrangements
Under the arrangement between the BJP and the SAD that continued for several decades, the BJP contested three seats — Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Hoshiarpur.
This time, however, the BJP wants a larger share, citing the SAD’s diminishing political influence in Punjab. Despite remaining in power for two consecutive terms from 2007 to 2017, the SAD’s vote share has now dwindled to less than 20 percent.
Apart from the three seats, the BJP also wants Patiala and Ludhiana. From Patiala, the BJP is planning to field sitting MP Preneet Kaur, who left the Congress and joined the BJP last week.
Meanwhile, sources in the SAD said that the party was keen on contesting the Amritsar seat, in exchange for which it was ready to give up the Patiala seat to the BJP.
“The BJP always fields extremely suave and sophisticated candidates from the Amritsar seat, making it almost impossible for the candidate to connect with the rustic population of rural Amritsar. As a result, the BJP has been losing the seat,” an Akali leader told ThePrint.
In the 2012 assembly elections, when the Akali Dal made history by coming to power for the second term, the party’s vote share was 34.73 percent. In the 2017 assembly elections, its vote share dipped to 25.24 percent, which further dropped to 18.38 percent in the 2022 elections.
On the other hand, the BJP’s vote share has averaged 10 percent in various Lok Sabha elections since 1997 — all contested in alliance with the SAD.
In the 2022 assembly elections when the BJP contested without the SAD as an ally, its vote share was 6.6 percent — a marginal increase from the 2017 assembly elections when the BJP as SAD ally secured 5.39 percent votes.
Following their split in 2021, the BJP has endeavoured to strengthen its Punjab presence, notably by inducting numerous leaders from other parties. For instance, Sunil Jakhar, the current Punjab BJP chief, defected from Congress last year.
The BJP has also sought to penetrate rural areas, leveraging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overtures to the Sikh community. The party is hoping to come back to power at the Centre and its leaders feel that the BJP’s position is stronger in Punjab than ever before.
However, the Akalis disagree. According to party sources, the BJP’s position in the state is the same and it will not be able to muster more than 6-7 percent of the votes. “They (BJP) do not have candidates who can win elections. Plus, the party has no base in rural areas” said the Akali leader quoted above.
The SAD has also tried to put its own house in order last year to regain its political footprint in the state.
In December last year, Sukhbir Badal issued a public apology to Sikhs for his failure to stop multiple incidents of sacrilege nine years ago, the repercussions of which ultimately toppled the party from power.
Badal has also managed to bring back many of the old guard leaders who had left the party and formed separate groups.
In December 2021, Ranjit Singh Brahmpura along with his son Ravinder Singh rejoined the SAD after three years of having left the party in 2018. Brahmpura died in 2022.
Earlier this month, another senior leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa rejoined SAD, merging his party, the SAD (Sanyukt), with the SAD. Bibi Jagir Kaur, another senior party leader, also returned to the party this month.
“Apart from strengthening the party, the Punjab Bachao Yatra being carried out by Badal is getting a huge response. We are doing much better than we are credited for,” added the Akali leader.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)