The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Thursday convened its core committee meeting for introspection into the Lok Sabha election debacle and to find the way out for the party’s revival amid rebel voices of the party leaders raising questions on party president Sukhbir Singh Badal.
The meeting which started at 3 pm came to an end at 9.30 pm. After the meeting, SAD spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema said that the meeting remained peaceful and there was no discussion with regard to the change of the party’s president.He further added that the party has decided to reconstitute the disciplinary committee which will decide all election-related matters pertaining to indiscipline and similar meetings will continue in the coming days also.
SAD’s patron and former Union minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, and other core committee member Sikandar Singh Maluka did not attend the meeting, stating that they were not invited by the party. Another SAD leader and former cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia also remained absent from the meeting.
However, former president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) Bibi Jagir Kaur, who had been raising questions on the top leadership in the recent past, attended the meeting.
In a humiliating defeat, the 103-year-old party which was fighting a battle for its survival without any alliance this time in the quadrangular Lok Sabha poll contest could hardly fetch 13.42% votes, much less than the 27.8% in the last Lok Sabha polls in 2019 and 18.38% in the 2022 legislative assembly elections.
The core committee decided that in the coming days, the SAD president would seek suggestions from the party leaders individually as well as collectively to formulate the party’s overall agenda and strategy for future. “The party places full faith and confidence in his (Badal’s) leadership and salutes his single-minded devotion to the party’s interests,” mentioned the party’s press statement.
The meeting also considered the party’s likely strategy for the forthcoming bypolls in Punjab. Earlier, the core committee also took a serious view of the “well-orchestrated and vicious vilification campaign” against the party and its leadership.
In a resolution, the party expressed deep concern over the growing communal polarisation in society and its abuse in politics in the country. The committee condemned “poisonous and divisive utterances” of actor-turned-MP Kangana Ranaut and said that she must be held accountable for her abusive, humiliating and rabidly communal utterances which caused deep emotional hurt that led to the unfortunate incident at the airport. “CISF constable Kulwinder Kaur’s alleged action must not be seen in isolation of the circumstances that led to it,” said the committee members.
The party also condemned the attack on a Sikh youth in Kaithal and the criminal typecasting of him as a separatist.
