‘Piecemeal move, one-man army’: Fingers point at Sukhbir as he orders Akali churn

Talking to The Indian Express, Wadala said, “Responsibility starts from the top. It is a piecemeal decision that suited them (the Akali leadership). It was a decision taken in haste that has created even more confusion in the party. The responsibility starts at the top and not anywhere in the middle or below that.”

Badal had set up a 16-member committee, headed by party secretary general Balwinder Singh Bhunder to look into the reasons that led to Akali Dal being relegated to just three seats in the 117-member Vidhan Sabha, down from 15 in the 2017 polls. Thereafter, a 13-member sub-committee led by Iqbal Singh Jhundan was formed to speed up the process and take feedback from party workers.

The Jhudan sub-committee’s report, presented at the party’s core committee headed by Badal, is said to have made 42 recommendations and authorised the party chief to “take the necessary follow-up action” on its implementation. Following this, the party announced that “all bodies, including the core committee, the working committee, the office bearers and all other units as well as all wings of the party stand dissolved”.

On criticism that the sub-committee’s report should have been discussed in the parent Bhunder-led committee before being discussed in the core committee, Jhundan, who headed the sub-committee, told The Indian Express that it was for the Bhunder committee to answer, adding that report of his sub-committee would be made public by the party in the coming days.

However, a senior Akali leader, who was one of the 13 members of the Jhundan sub-committee, said they had received feedback from party workers — the inputs, he said, are part of “recorded diaries” in the report — that Badal and his father and Akali veteran Parkash Singh Badal should seek penance at the Akal Takht for incidents of sacrilege and police firing on protestors during their regime.

“Workers strongly demanded a change in senior leadership. They said Sukhbir Singh Badal must go and nepotism must end,” said the senior leader, adding, “By dissolving all units of the party, it is a one-man army now. Ideally, the changes should have been brought about gradually.”

Akali Dal MLA from Dakha, Manpreet Ayali, one of the party’s three MLAs in the Assembly who is also a member of the Jhundan-led sub-committee, said,“People are ready to associate with the Akali Dal if the recommendations of the sub-committee are implemented. There are 42 recommendations and we stand by what we said in the report.”

Claiming that he hadn’t been consulted, Ayali had abstained from voting in the presidential election in which the party had backed NDA candidate Droupadi Murmu.

Senior leader and former MP Prem Singh Chandumajra had earlier questioned the Badal-led core committee’s call to bypass the Bhunder committee, of which he was a part.

“Ideally, the sub-committee report should have been deliberated in the parent committee (Bhunder panel) before it was presented in the party’s core committee,” the senior Akali leader had told The Indian Express.