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Badal pulls off what he
always was expected to,
still some are surprised
Gian Inder Singh/WSN Bureau
 CHANDIGARH: “A
decision has been taken, and the BJP High Command has been informed.
There is no question of going back on it.” Parkash Singh Badal was
blatant and nonchalant at the same time last Friday when reporters
asked him about Punjab BJP leadership’s reaction to plans to make
his son Sukhbir Singh Badal the Deputy CM.
Parkash Singh Badal reached
Delhi on Saturday,
January 17, to meet BJP leaders at the Centre after the BJP state
unit brioke out in restiveness.
Even as sections of the media and political domain wondered
about the virtually daring act of the Akali Dal to have a father-son
duo as CM and Deputy CM in a state which has a coalition government,
that too without taking the coalition partner into confidence, BJP’s
Punjab affairs incharge at the Centre, Arun Jaitley, counselled
patience to his party men.
So Papa CM now has a son Deputy CM, son’s brother-in-law
ready for another assignment after his ‘sacrifice’, son-in-law as a
minister and a nephew as a minister.
Calibrated moves to concentrate all powers within the Badal
family and its acolytes had been on for quite some time. No wonder
Sukhbir’s contribution to the election campaign in the last Assembly
election was tom-tommed as something of an earthshaking achievement
through massive advertisements and statements in the media. Later,
he was made the acting party president after a sham-show of senior
Akali leaders pleading with Badal Sr. to let them please have
Sukhbir as leader of the Akali Dal.
Soon, there were demands at a PAC meeting that he made a full
time President of the party.
Parkash Singh Badal looked utterly ridiculous as his tears
had welled up and he “had to agree” to such a strong request from
party members. Once Sukhbir was made the Akali Dal president, the
family made a little discovery after reading about it all in the
media. Sukhbir had made history by becoming the first president of
Akali Dal, or of any faction of the Akali Dal, who was not an ‘Amritdhari’.
For months, Sukhbir resisted getting himself baptised but then
shrewd Badal Sr’s advice prevailed and one fine morning, the man who
celebrates everything in grand style, almost sneaked into a gurdwara
to partake of Amrit, the ceremony kept very private lest it harmed
the grand secular image of the Badals, earned with such dexterity by
hob-nobbing with the RSS-BJP and participating in countless Aartis
and Jagratas.
Coalition partner BJP which has 19 seats in the 117-strong
Assembly and whose support is crucial to the survival of the Akali
Dal, later claimed that the Deputy CM post was irrelevant and should
not be there at all. Constitutionally, the Deputy CM post simply
does not exist but across the country, ruling parties in states are
known to create such a post as matter of political convenience. The
same BJP which is now terming the Deputy CM office as “irrelevant”
was in the news for many weeks asking that its Cabinet Minister
Manoranjan Kalia be made the Deputy CM, a demand which the Akali Dal
resisted and later had its way with the central leadership of the
BJP.
The BJP has rejected the Akali Dal’s offer of having two
Deputy CM. Sukhbir’s elevation immediately reduces the stature of
BJP’s Manoranjan Kalia who was virtually conducting himself as a
Deputy CM and whose mug hitherto stared out of all government
advertisements even though he is only a Cabinet minister.
Interestingly, and ironically, the move to make Sukhbir a
Deputy CM came close on the heels of senior Akali Minister Capt
Kanwaljit Singh underlining the resentment within the Akali Dal over
the undue projection of Sukhbir Badal as the only leader who counts.
Kanwaljit had said that Sukhbir’s political fate was connected to
the outcome of Parliamentary elections, a phase that the Akalis are
likely to find tough.
Later, Kanwaljit did not press the point beyond a point, a
strategy that he has perfected every time he wants to make a point,
but clearly the point was either not registered or is now being
outscored.
21 January 2009
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