At an event in Patiala’s Devigarh on August 22, organised to protest against the state government’s “apathy” following widespread floods in the state, Badal took a dig at the BJP for trying to portray itself as the “big brother” if an alliance between the two crystallises. The message was that it was not acceptable to the Akali Dal that the BJP would have more say if the two parties got back together. The speculation about the Akali Dal and the BJP coming back together gained pace earlier this year following the death of Akali patriarch Parkash Singh Badal. Senior BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paid homage to the former Punjab CM. The already strained ties took a hit in May after the former allies contested the Jalandhar parliamentary bypoll. Both of them lost the election afterwards the BJP’s solo pitch in Punjab only got stronger. In June, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh reached out to the Akal Dal at a public meeting in Chandigarh. “I do not know why the SAD quit the NDA, but I would like to say that even if someone leaves NDA, we still love them and respect them,” he said a day after the Akalis stayed away from the INDIA bloc’s Patna conclave. But the tone changed again the following month after Sunil Jakhar took over as the state BJP president and announced his decision to expand the party’s footprint in all 117 Assembly constituencies and 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The Akalis, left miffed, stayed away from both the Opposition’s Bengaluru conclave and the NDA’s meeting. Meanwhile, state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring has hit out at the Akali leadership for “attempting to associate with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to maintain its existence in the state” to get to the BJP and form a “false image to force its entry in the NDA.”
