SAD ‘boycott’ of V-P poll: A bid to stay in the game in Punjab politics?

Rebel faction also questions Sukhbir Badal's move, to abstain from the poll citing Punjab floods, as a "case of too little, too late"

Bhatinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal is the SAD's lone MP.

3 min readLudhianaSep 9, 2025 06:58 PM IST First published on: Sep 9, 2025 at 06:58 PM IST

THE Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) cited the Punjab government and Centre’s “abandonment” of the state in the aftermath of the floods to abstain from the Vice-Presidential poll on Tuesday. But the move has brought to the fore the party’s fissures and shrinking support base to the fore again.

The SAD’s abstention marks a departure from the party’s stand in the 2022 presidential poll when it had backed NDA nominee Droupadi Murmu despite having severed ties with the BJP in September 2020, over the now-repealed controversial farm laws.

But the SAD move is being seen by many as a desperate attempt to stay “relevant” in the state’s political landscape. The party has only one MP, Lok Sabha member Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who is also SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s wife.

Announcing that it would “boycott” the V-P poll, Badal said Monday that the Punjab floods were “a man-made tragedy caused by the negligence and incompetence of the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government”. “Punjab has stood by the nation in every crisis but today, Punjabis are left to fight this battle alone with Sikh rural youth and Sikh volunteers leading relief efforts. How can we participate in an election when Punjab feels betrayed?” he said.

Mocking Badal’s stand, Manpreet Singh Ayali, the SAD MLA from Dakha who is a prominent face of the party’s rebel faction led by former Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh. “They realise things when it is too late. In 2022, they went ahead and backed the NDA candidate. Now, suddenly they remember Punjab’s issues. Had the issues been resolved in 2022?” Ayali told The Indian Express.

Incidentally, Ayali had defied the SAD’s stand in 2022 and boycotted the presidential poll, claiming it “was immoral to side with the NDA without consulting party cadre”.

Two other MPs from Punjab, Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa (Faridkot) and Amritpal Singh (Khadoor Sahib), who won as Independents and are currently in jail, also abstained from the V-P polls Tuesday, with the Faridkot MP lashing out at the Centre’s “step-motherly treatment of Punjab” and terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aerial survey of flood-hit areas as “merely symbolic”.

The SAD has seen a steady decline in its electoral fortunes since the 2017 Assembly polls, where it won 15 seats with a 25.24% vote share. Five years later, the party contested the polls in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and managed to win just three seats with a 18.38% vote share.

Since the 2022 rout, the SAD has been further dented by infighting with two of its MLAs deserting the party. While Ayali has joined the rebel SAD faction, its Banga legislator Sukhwinder Kumar crossed over to the AAP last year but is yet to resign from the Assembly. Effectively, the party has a lone member – Majithia MLA Ganieve Kaur Majithia – in the 117-member House.

Last year’s Lok Sabha elections too did not go down well for the SAD with 10 of its 13 candidates forfeiting their deposit and only Harsimrat managing to retain her seat. Its vote share spiralled from 27.45% in 2019, when it contested as a part of the NDA and won two seats, to 13.42% in 2024.