Parkash Singh Badal, the man who held the honour of being the youngest and oldest chief minister of a state, is no more. The Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch passed away at the age of 95 on Tuesday after a brief illness.
With Badal’s demise, Punjab politics sees the end of an era – the Shiromani Akali Dal has lost its leader and guiding light, the state has lost its great reconciler and politics has lost a stalwart, a member of a generation who saw Independence, survived the Emergency, and see Punjab politics take a surprising turn in 2022.
Leaders cutting across political parties paid tribute to the veteran politician. President Droupadi Murmu said Badal was one of the tallest political stalwarts since independence. “Though his exemplary career in public service was largely confined to Punjab, he was respected across the country. His demise leaves a void. My heartfelt condolences to his family and admirers.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had once called Badal the ‘Nelson Mandela of India’, described the Punjab politician’s demise as a “personal loss”. “Extremely saddened by the passing away of Shri Parkash Singh Badal Ji. He was a colossal figure of Indian politics, and a remarkable statesman who contributed greatly to our nation,” said Modi.
As the country mourns the loss of Parkash Singh Badal, we trace his rise and what made him a mainstay of state politics.
Early life
Born on 8 December 1927 in Abul Khurana, near Malout, Badal graduated from the Forman Christian College in Lahore.
Badal has often stated that his entry into politics was accidental. According to a report published in the Hindustan Times, Badal after graduation on the insistence of his father met his uncle Teja Sigh, who was then a minister in Punjab with a request for direct appointment as tehsildar. A few days later, Teja Singh called him to Chandigarh and handed him an appointment letter to the post. After Badal read the letter, he profusely thanked his uncle, who then promptly took it back from him and tore it up. He then told Badal, “Pash, I want you to be someone who will appoint tehsildars.”
And that’s how he began his career in politics. At the age of 20, he became the sarpanch of Badal village and the chairman of the block samiti. That was a stepping stone for him and in 1957, he entered the state Assembly from Malout in 1957 as the Congress nominee. He later joined the Shiromani Akali Dal and became a cutting critic of the Congress. In 1969, he won the Gidderbaha Assembly seat on the SAD ticket.
In 1970, he became the state’s youngest chief minister at 43 – a record that still stands. His political career took off from there and he never looked back.
Rise and rise in politics
He rose to the chief minister’s chair once again in 1977 and repeated his success in 1997, and then, for two successive five-year terms, in 2007 and 2012. When he was sworn-in in 2007, he was almost 80, but such was his hold on the state’s Panthic pitch, that there was no talk of his son replacing him.
Badal went to jail multiple times during and after the Emergency in the mid-1970s and the 1980s. The veteran also courted arrest during Operation Bluestar in June 1984 when the Army entered the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar to flush out militants. He refused to become the deputy chief minister under Surjit Singh Barnala after the 1985 elections and later quit the party as the rift widened. In 1986, Badal formed Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal).
During his tenures as chief minister, Badal introduced several populist schemes. He provided free power to farmers and also introduced the Atta-Daal scheme for Dalits, brining relief to farming and poor communities.
It is also said that despite his rise in politics, Badal ensured he maintained a presence at the grassroots level. In an interaction with Hindustan Times, the then 85-year-old leader said that he had asked his staff to keep a diary of deaths of Akali workers across Punjab. He would then visit the families of those who had passed to express his condolence. This small act ensured that people never forgot him and helped cement his credentials as a mass leader.
Also read: Badal Inc: Punjab CM’s family wealth knows no limit
He was also a shrewd politician – he stitched together an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1997 and it continued until 2021 when the two parties had differences over the now recalled farm laws. In fact, his alliance with the BJP was one of the longest such partnerships in the country.
Badal despite growing older also had stamina unlike others. Even arch rival Captain Amarinder Singh has commented on Badal’s ability to criss-cross the state and meet people.
And he never gave up in politics. Only last year, the Shiromani Akal Dal fielded him from home turf Lambi in Punjab’s Muktsar district for the Assembly elections. He lost but entered the record books for being the oldest person to fight an election in the country. It was his 14th electoral battle. All in all, his political career saw him becoming chief minister five times from 1970-71, 1977-80, 1997-2002, 2007-12 and 2012-17.
A complicated legacy
However, his time in politics is not without controversy. During his years in power, Badal was accused of undermining the democratic character of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and Akal Takht, the two pillars of Sikh politics.
The one allegation that was perhaps, the most troubling was regarding the sacrilege incidents of Guru Granth Sahib under his watch in 2015. Both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party governments blamed Badal for the police firing that followed at Kotkapura. Two years after a clean chit by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2021, he was named an accused in the Kotkapura firing conspiracy in March this year.
He also became one of the few to return the Padma Vibhushan award. Rewarded in 2015, he returned the honour as a mark of protest against the three controversial farm laws.
But as Pramod Kumar, a political commentator who is the director of the Institute of Development and Communication in Chandigarh, told The Wire Badal’s demise marks the end of an era. “He belonged to that generation of politicians who handled every situation with political maturity, unlike reactionary politics today. He represented a moderate voice of Punjab politics and did not encourage divisiveness in society,” he said.
With inputs from agencies
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