Akali Dal faces one of it’s worst political crises with senior party leaders raising questions over the party president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s decision to walk out of the assembly and refusal to participate in the debate on one of the most important matters related to Sikh Panth ( sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib).
The senior leaders, those who participated in the taksali movement and organised morchas, are learnt to have told Sukhbir Singh Badal that the Party seems to be losing the perception battle and that the Party was not even on course correction.
This is the first time that the senior leaders, who have mostly been sidelined since the last assembly election, have openly spoken against a decision taken by Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal.
The leaders- Tota Singh, Prem Singh Chandumajra and Sewa Singh Sekhwan- raised questions over the decision, during the core committee meeting of the Party held here last night. The leaders are learnt to have pointed out how the Ranjit Singh Commission report helped the Congress become Panthic and clearly aimed at projecting Akali Dal as anti Panthic, even as the Akali Dal and BJP legislators failed to defend the party.
Talking to The Tribune here today, Tota Singh, a former minister and amongst the senior most Akali leaders, said that “these were his personal views and everyone has a right to express his opinion in the core committee. Though the party got just 14 minutes to participate in the debate, which prompted them to walk out, I feel they should have stayed in the Assembly and defended the party and Party patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, who was the main target by the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.
Had the party leaders been inside the assembly, they could have defended the party and derogatory words used against the Party and Badal could have been expunged,” he said, adding that he had even sent a message to the party president to go inside the House, which went unheeded.
Though other senior party leaders including MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, tried to play this down, saying that the party appreciated diverse view points. He, however, agreed that the Congress had succeeded in their efforts to project Akali Dal as “anti Panthic” by “misusing the Ranjit Singh commission inquiry report and turning it into a political document”.
