Amid speculations that it was keen to realign with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and stitch an alliance again, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) made its stand clear on the Opposition parties’ meeting convened by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday. While Akali Dal spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema said the party had “no invitation” to the Patna meet, senior SAD leader and former Rajya Sabha member Balwinder Singh Bhunder said it had become untenable for the Akali Dal to attend the Opposition parties’ meeting with their main opponent Congress taking centre stage. Leaders including senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin are expected to attend the first joint meeting of 18-odd Opposition parties in Patna ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Senior Akali leader and former MP Prem Singh Chandumajra too said, "Akali Dal was not invited for the meeting. We could have deliberated upon attending the meeting had there been an invitation. But, in that scenario also, the Akali Dal would have attended the meeting only if the focus was on strengthening the federal structure on the lines of Anandpur Sahib resolution." Chandumajra said he was "the first to initiate the exercise for opposition unity and had reached out to leaders like Udhav Thackeray, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar. Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav". Chandumajra added, "We are surprised that Akali Dal which is a powerful regional party was not invited." "When I initiated the exercise and reached out to the leaders of various parties, they were of the view that [Parkash Singh] Badal sahib - Badal passed away in April - should preside over the meeting at Delhi. But, Badal sahib was not keeping good health, so that could not crystallize," said Chandumajra, adding that the opposition parties' meet on Friday was "bereft of any agenda and looked like furthering the political interests of an individual and a party." “The combinations are different. The Congress has emerged as the main partner in the Opposition parties’ meeting by getting relatively stronger. The other constituent of the Opposition grouping is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The Congress and AAP are our main opponents. So the Akali Dal has decided not to be part of such a platform where its key opponents have emerged as main players,” Bhunder told The Indian Express. The veteran SAD leader, however, added that Akali Dal had cordial relations with leaders like Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar, Naveen Patnaik and Mamata Banerjee. Asked if the Akali Dal would have participated if there was an invitation, Cheema said, “It is a hypothetical question since there was no invitation in the first place.” Earlier this month a senior SAD leader told The Indian Express that the party was keen on a tie-up with the BJP again and the latter was weighing the options. Senior leaders of the SAD and BJP believe the people see a “ray of hope” in the estranged political parties coming together again. The two-decade-long ties between the two parties ended lapsed when the Akali Dal walked out of the NDA in 2020, snapping ties with the BJP following the massive, year-long protests against the three central farm laws, which were eventually withdrawn. SAD vice-president Maheshinder Singh Grewal told The Indian Express earlier this month that “Doors are never closed in politics. Nothing is impossible.” However, he added that “much water has flown under the bridge” since the farm laws row. According to Grewal, there were still some riders before a return to the tie-up, such as “the formation of a separate committee for Haryana to manage Sikh affairs in the BJP-ruled state”, meeting the party’s demand to free “Bandi Singhs (Sikh prisoners convicted for political actions), and ending “interference of Haryana to weaken Punjab’s claim over Chandigarh”. “If the BJP removes these irritants and addresses our demands, we are not averse to allying with them again,” said Grewal, pointing out that the Akali Dal had been an ally of the BJP back in the time of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and had done so “as representatives of the minority Sikh community”, at a time when the BJP was denounced as a communal party. For the Akali Dal to align with the BJP again, Grewal said, “a sense of participation has to be there”. “We shouldn’t be commanded. We need to be taken into confidence. We are important minority people, and have contributed a lot for the state and the nation.” Veteran BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia also backed an alliance with the Akali Dal, saying: “It has been seen that whenever there is an Akali Dal-BJP alliance, it has worked for the betterment of the state. There is peace and communal harmony… The Aam Aadmi Party does not have any ideology. Voting in the 2022 [Punjab] election was against traditional parties, as people fed up with the existing parties voted for change and got the AAP to power. But a year and a half later, the AAP government’s performance has left voters disillusioned. They now want to return to the older parties. And if there is an Akali-BJP alliance again, it will be a ray of hope for them.” On the contrary, Union minister and senior BJP leader Hardeep Singh Puri has time and again ruled out any future tie-up with the SAD.
