Badungar quits as SGPC chief, Tohra gets ready

PATIALA: Akali politics took another twist on Sunday, when Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Kirpal Singh Badungar quit his office to make way for veteran Akali leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra.
The SGPC executive accepted Badungar’s resignation at Gurdwara Dukhnivaranon Sahib and appointed senior vice-president Alwinder Pal Singh Pakhowal as the acting president.An emergency meeting of the SGPC executive is expected to take place on Friday, to co-opt Tohra as an executive member and subsequently elevate him to the top SGPC office, his 26th term.
Though on the surface a smooth change of guard, orchestrated by Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal, rumblings of discontent were evident during the over two-hour long executive committee meeting. Even as Badungar, in his choked voice, announced his resignation four months before his two-year-term ended, the executive’s resolution said ‘‘it was accepting Badungar’s resignation much against the wishes of its members’’.
Four of the 15 members were absent at the meeting. Sources said Badal had hurried through the process of transfer of power due to mounting resentment amongst SGPC members and his party leaders.