Badals’ nearly three-decade SAD reign comes to an end
Sukhbir Badal's resignation from SAD ends a 30-year Badal legacy, following electoral declines and internal party splits amid growing dissent.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) working committee’s Friday decision to accept the resignation tendered by Sukhbir Singh Badal in November last year marks the end of an unchallenged legacy of the Badals at the helm of party affairs spanning nearly three decades. Parkash Singh Badal took the reins of the party in 1996.

Badal’s departure marks the end of a challenging period for both him and the party. Having first won election as MP from Faridkot in 1998, he became SAD president in 2008 and served as deputy chief minister in the SAD-BJP government. However, the party faced significant setbacks under his leadership, including the 2015 protests over the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib and diminishing electoral performance.
In the 2022 state elections, SAD’s representation in the assembly dropped to just three MLAs, with Badal himself losing his seat amid AAP’s sweeping victory with 92 MLAs.
Five times chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, who donned the role of a patriarch, passed on the party’s reins to his son Sukhbir in 2008, a year after the party formed a coalition government along with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The coalition won the second term in 2012 and the victory was attributed to Sukhbir as having ‘mastered’ the skill of winning electoral battles. But the fate took a different turn in 2015 with a series of sacrilege incidents rocking the state. The party and particularly then deputy CM Sukhbir, who was also the home minister, was blamed for not only ‘failing’ to control the incidents but not ‘taking action’ against the accused.
The sacrilege incidents followed a flip-flop by the party on managing pardon for Dera Sirsa head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh who was earlier excommunicated by the Akal Takht.
In the 2017 state polls, the party was reduced to 15 members in the 117-member state assembly and further fell to just three in 2022. Siding with the peasantry, who was then opposing the now repealed farm laws, the party, in 2022, cut ties with the BJP, its ally of 25 years. The move further contributed to the party’s slide.
The voices against Sukhbir Badal to quit the top post got shriller and the final blow came when the party suffered a vertical split and a section of leaders, including a few of the Sukhbir’s closest allies in the party, turned rebellious and approached the Akal Takht in July last year seeking atonement for the mistakes committed during the party’s government from 2007 to 2017.
On August 30 last year, Sukhbir suffered another blow when he was declared tankhaiya (guilty of religious misconduct) by Akal Takht for mistakes committed during the party’s government from 2007-17. Three months later on December 2, the Takht pronounced the edict asking the party to accept his resignation and imposed sewa on Sukhbir and other leaders which involved washing utensils, cleaning and shoe polishing.
With the party’s core constituency, the panth (Sikhs) and peasants, already out of its grip, SAD is now desperately trying to find a route for its revival.
The farmers have found alternatives in other political parties, while the radicals led by the family members of jailed Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh are eyeing to capture the panth and have plans to float a political outfit SAD (Anandpur Sahib) at Maghi on January 14, in Muktsar - the event that commemorates the martyrdom of 40 muktas (Sikhs) of Guru Gobind Singh.
To counter the radicals, and bring back the panth into its fold, SAD has also planned a parallel rally, which Sukhbir will also address.
According to Jagrup Singh Sekhon, a political analyst, who remained head of the political science department of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Sukhbir should have taken an exit gracefully.
“But the party kept postponing it as if people would forget. As the opposition (within the party) grew stronger and now when the pressure has been mounted from all sides he has resigned,” Sekhon said adding, “What’s the alternative? If not Sukhbir, who is there to replace him?”
“Now in case he has to survive politically, he should not become the party president on March 1. He needs to behave as a statesman and work hard so that people ask him to take on the party’s reins,” Sekhon added.
Sukhbir Badal’s principal adviser Harcharan Bains said Friday’s decision puts an end to the vilification of Badals, particularly Sukhbir. “Defying threats to life, he has completely submitted himself to the Akal Takht, performed sewa assigned to him and has not uttered a single word against the authority of the temporal seat,” he added.
Bains, however, refused to comment if Sukhbir will be re-elected on March 1, when the party would go for office bearer’s election. The internal polls are slated to be held after a month-long membership drive from January 20 to February 20.
