Despite snapping ties with BJP, Parkash Singh Badal cherished time with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani

CHANDIGARH: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had been the oldest ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in which the SAD patriarch and five-time chief minister of Punjab was among the founding members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The SAD and the BJP had stitched an alliance just after the 1996 parliamentary elections and the pre-poll alliance in the state had brought the SAD-BJP coalition to power in the 1997 Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections. Badal used to term the SAD’s alliance with the BJP as ‘sacred’.

In an interview with the TOI on May 12, 2019, Badal said, “I had a great relationship with Vajpayeeji (former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee) and Advaniji (former deputy PM Lal Krishna Advani). There was a lot of mutual regard and respect among us and there still is with the leadersnow. ” The former CM had also said, “The Akali Dal and BJP don’t have a political alliance, it is an ideological alliance. It’s like the close relationship between nailsand skin, like the two eyes. ”

Badal added, “The Akali Dal does not change allies due to political ups and downs, which are part of life anyway,and that’s why we have stood with the BJP since then. ”

But the SAD severed a 24-year-old alliance with the BJP on September 26, 2020on the contentious farm bills. The SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal and other party leaders had then opened an attack on BJP’s senior leadership for not taking the Akalis on board before taking important decisions, especially concerning Punjab and Punjabis. After the Shiv Sena and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the SAD was the third major ally to pull out of the NDA.

The Akali stalwart travelled to Varanasi on April 26, 2019, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched his feet before filing his nomination for the Lok Sabha elections. Before this, Badal had also travelled to Gandhinagar on March 30, 2019, where then BJP national president Amit Shah had touched his feet before filing election papers for the parliamentary polls.

Among BJP leaders in the state, the SAD patriarch had good relations with Madan Mohan Mittal who later joined the SAD in January 2022, Manoranjan Kalia, Master Mohan Lal and Avinash Rai Khanna, say party leaders.