8 axed Akali Dal rebels: Former ministers and SGPC chief to party veterans and ex-Sukhbir aides

The eight expelled SAD leaders include Gurpartap Singh Wadala, Bibi Jagir Kaur, Prem Singh Chandumajra, Parminder Singh Dhindsa, Sikander Singh Maluka, Surjit Singh Rakhra, Surinder Singh Thekedar and Charanjit Singh Brar.

The Akali leadership’s move came a week after it dissolved the party’s core committee, in which all these rebel leaders were members. On July 1, the SAD rebels appeared before the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhs, and apologised for the “mistakes” that were committed during 2007-17, when the party was in power in the state.

They are also part of the Akali dissident group, which on July 15 launched a campaign called “Shiromani Akali Dal Sudhar Lehar” with the avowed objective to “ensure reforms” in the 103-year-old party. Here is a look at these eight SAD rebels.

Gurpartap Singh Wadala

Gurpartap Singh Wadala, 60, is a two-time SAD MLA from Nakodar in Jalandhar district. His father Kuldip Singh Wadala was also an Akali MLA.

Gurpartap Singh Wadala, who studied electrical engineering, won the Assembly polls in 2012 and 2017.

Wadala, who is the SAD Sudhar Lehar’s convener, said, “This reform movement aims to find out the faults in the party by interacting with a cross-section of people.”

Bibi Jagir Kaur

Bibi Jagir Kaur, 69, had been the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president for three terms. She is the only woman leader to have served as the SGPC chief. She had joined the SAD in 1995, winning her first Assembly polls on the party ticket in 1997 from the Bholath constituency. She also won from the same seat in the 2002 and 2012 polls.

Kaur was first expelled from the SAD on November 8, 2022, when she announced she would contest the election for the SGPC president’s post

again despite the party’s disapproval. She lost the poll to the SAD-backed Harjinder Singh Dhami.

Interestingly, Sikander Singh Maluka, who was then the head of the SAD disciplinary committee that expelled Kaur, now finds himself in the list of the expelled leaders.

Besides heading the SAD’s women wing, Kaur had also been a minister in the party-led alliance government with the BJP in Punjab. She was reinducted into the SAD ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Prem Singh Chandumajra

The three-time Akali MP Prem Singh Chandumajra, 74, had also been a minister in the Punjab government. He became the first president of the Akali Dal’s youth wing in early 1980s. In 1985, he won the Assembly polls from Dakala and was inducted into the SAD-led government.

In the 1996 Lok Sabha polls, Chandumajra won from Anandpur Sahib on the Akali Dal’s ticket. In the 1998 polls, he defeated then Congress leader Capt Amarinder Singh in Patiala.

In 2004, Chandumajra switched to a breakaway SAD outfit Sarb Hind Akali Dal, which was floated by Gurcharan Singh Tohra after he had developed differences with Badals.

Later, Chandumajra shifted to another Akali splinter party Shiromani Akali Dal (Longowal), which was finally merged with the then Parkash Singh Badal-led SAD in 2007.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Chandumajra again won from the Anandpur Sahib seat. Ahead of the 2024 polls, he had supported the SAD’s tie-up with its estranged partner BJP. He contested from the Anandpur Sahib seat as a SAD candidate, but lost.

Considered close to Sukhbir, Chandumajra was the party’s general secretary and spokesperson before he rebelled against him.

Parminder Singh Dhindsa

Parminder Singh Dhindsa, 50, is the son of Akali stalwart Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa. He joined the Akali Dal in the mid-1990s and was appointed the general secretary of the party’s youth wing in 1998.

The five-time Akali MLA, Parminder had won for the first time from the Sunam seat in 2000.

Parminder served as the PWD minister from 2007-2012 and as the finance minister from 2012-2017. In September 2018, his father Dhindsa Senior resigned from all SAD posts, stating that a leadership change was needed in the party and that he was unhappy over the way it had dealt with the 2015 sacrilege incidents.

In February 2020, the SAD expelled the father-son duo from the party. In July 2020, they had formed a new outfit, SAD (Sanyukt), which unsuccessfully contested the 2022 Assembly polls in alliance with the BJP in Punjab.

In March this year, Dhindsa Senior merged his party with the SAD, but differences surfaced between them soon as Sukhbir denied Parminder the Lok Sabha poll ticket from Sangrur. Parminder has thus been expelled from the Akali Dal twice in four years.

Sikander Singh Maluka

The 75-year-old Akali veteran and two-time MLA Sikander Singh Maluka was education minister in the 2012 Akali Dal-BJP government. He hit the headlines in April 2024 after his daughter-in-law Parampal Kaur Sidhu Maluka, a former IAS officer, joined the BJP after taking premature retirement. In the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, in which the SAD and the BJP fought separately, the latter fielded Parampal from Bathinda, the seat represented by the SAD’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Sukhbir’s wife, who retained her seat.

Although Maluka stayed away from his daughter-in-law’s electioneering, on the last day of the campaign he praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his policies through a video message.

Maluka was the first Akali leader to speak against the Centre’s now-repealed farm laws in 2020, which eventually led to a break-up between the SAD and the BJP.

He was the SAD disciplinary committee chairperson weeks before being expelled from the party on July 30.

Surjit Singh Rakhra

Surjit Singh Rakhra, 73, secured his maiden Assembly poll win from Samana in Patiala district in 2002. He also won from the seat in 2012. He served as the water supply and sanitation minister in the SAD-led government during 2012-2017. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he contested on the party’s ticket from Patiala against the then Congress candidate Preneet Kaur, but lost.

Surinder Singh Thekedar

Surinder Singh Thekedar, who hails from Hoshiarpur, had been the SAD’s senior vice-president. He contested, unsuccessfully, the Assembly polls from the Garshankar constituency of Hoshiarpur district in 2022.

Charanjeet Singh Brar

Charanjeet Singh Brar, 54, is a former political advisor to Sukhbir. He contested the 2022 Assembly polls from Rajpura on the SAD ticket, but lost.

In 2012, he switched to Manpreet Singh Badal’s People Party of Punjab, which the latter had floated after leaving the Akali Dal.

In 2012, Brar returned to the SAD after the SAD-BJP alliance came back to power. He was political advisor to Sukhbir during 2012-2017, when the latter was the deputy chief minister.

Brar was also one of the SAD’s spokespersons before being expelled from the party. He became vocal against Sukhbir soon after the SAD’s decimation in the recent Lok Sabha polls.