Sukhbir Badal, cousin Manpreet deny ‘reunion’ claim by Akali rebel as bypoll nears

A constituency that falls in Muktsar district, the Badal home turf, Gidderbaha was once the bastion of family patriarch Parkash Singh Badal and won continuously by Manpreet between 1995 and 2007.

Dhillon, who said the SAD followed a “use-and-throw” policy with him, unsuccessfully contested from Gidderbaha in 2017 and 2022 on the SAD ticket. He is now expected to join the state’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

However, both Sukhbir and Manpreet have denied the rumours, though it has not gone unnoticed that the two have for a year now refrained from speaking out against each other.

Manpreet founded the People’s Party of Punjab in 2011 after leaving the SAD, but merged it with the Congress in 2016. In early 2023, he joined the BJP. However, over the years and over various political affiliations, rumours that Manpreet will return to the SAD fold have kept popping up.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, when Manpreet was in the Congress, the party’s Bathinda candidate, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, had accused Manpreet of not providing enough support to him. Warring’s rival was Harsimrat Kaur Badal, an SAD MP and Sukhbir’s wife. Warring had gone on to lay the blame for his defeat by nearly 20,000 votes on Manpreet, who was the state finance minister and the Bathinda Urban MLA at the time.

Tensions remained high till 2022, when Warring repeatedly alleged that Manpreet was distributing grants for development work to SAD leaders in his former Gidderbaha Assembly constituency. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Warring campaigned with slogans such as “Sare Badal Hara Deyo (Defeat all the Badals)” and “Sare Badal Mile Hoye Ne (All the Badals are colluding)” to “Bathinde Wala Badal Hara Deyo (Defeat the Badal contesting from Bathinda)”. This was a specific reference to Manpreet, the Congress’s Bathinda Urban Assembly seat candidate in the 2022 polls.

The 2022 Assembly polls, however, saw a wipeout of the SAD, including the three Badals in the race – Sukhbir, Manpreet and the late Akali Dal patriarch, Parkash Singh Badal. Warring had then “thanked” the voters for choosing “wisely” in defeating Manpreet, despite both of them being in the Congress.

From the SAD’s side too, its Bathinda Urban candidate, Sarup Chand Singla, claimed his third-place finish – behind the AAP and Congress – to his own party campaigning against him to favour Manpreet. Ironically, Singla quit the SAD and joined the BJP alongside Manpreet later.

After Parkash Badal’s death in April 2023, SAD leaders urged Sukhbir and Manpreet publicly to settle their differences.

Sparking off rumours again, Manpreet was invisible in the BJP’s 2024 Lok Sabha poll campaign in the Bathinda seat, from where Harsimrat was the SAD candidate. One reason he kept away was illness. It was only in the run-up to the final phase of voting that he attended a few poll meetings in Ludhiana, where Warring was the Congress candidate, with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other BJP leaders.

Now that the Gidderbaha Assembly seat is headed to bypolls following sitting MLA Warring’s election to the Lok Sabha, rumours about Manpreet and Sukhbir patching up have surfaced again.

Denying the same on Monday, Manpreet said SAD rebel Dhillon was spreading rumours. “The traditional Akali Dal vote bank in Gidderbaha and other places in Punjab is steadily shifting towards the BJP, and this has clearly rattled Dhillon… I am a BJP worker, and the BJP is my home, now and forever. I will relentlessly work towards strengthening the party.”

Also denying that Manpreet was on his way back to the SAD, Sukhbir urged Dhillon to take back his decision to quit the party. “False, fabricated, and baseless rumours have been spread that BJP leader Manpreet Singh Badal would be fielded by the SAD from Gidderbaha in the forthcoming by-elections,” Sukhbir said. “My commitment to the SAD, its ideals and principles, is above that to my family.”

Jumping in, Warring said: “Dhillon is saying it now, but I have been saying since 2022 that Sukhbir’s and Manpreet’s families are one.”