CHANDIGARH: With the assembly elections in Punjab scheduled to be held after a year, Punjab Congress president and Ludhiana MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Tuesday challenged Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal to contest only from Gidderbaha and not from multiple seats. Warring added that he would fight against Badal from Gidderbaha.
The Congress leader was responding to Sukhbir’s earlier announcement that he will contest the next assembly polls from Gidderbaha.
Warring also took a dig at the SAD president’s claim about his party’s performance in the Zila Parishad and Block Samiti elections. He said, barring a few seats in Muktsar and Bathinda, the Akalis were wiped out from across the state, adding that in eleven districts, they could not open their account.
Badal and his party are desperate to align with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is dismissing their overtures, he alleged, asking what was the need to do so if the Akalis' performance was so spectacular. The Akalis have taken a back seat on the issue of MGNREGA, he added, saying that while the lone Akali MP Harsimarat Kaur Badal initially sided with opposition parties in Parliament against the scrapping of the Act, within no time the party backed off.
"Will you spell out what is your agenda on release of Sikh detainees who have completed their jail sentences, transfer of Chandigarh and MGNREGA," he asked Sukhbir.
Warring claimed that the people of Punjab had neither forgotten nor forgiven the heinous crime of sacrilege that took place during the Akali regime for which Sukhbir had tendered an apology before the Akal Takht.
Last month, Sukhbir made the surprise announcement that he will fight these polls from Gidderbaha assembly constituency instead of Jalalabad. Interestingly, the Gidderbaha seat was represented by his late father and former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal from 1969 to 1985.
Sukhbir had made the announcement following a demand from party workers while inaugurating the party office in Gidderbaha for the Block Samiti and Zila Parishad elections. He also declared that people who had betrayed the party, including Hardeep Singh Dhillon, would never be taken back into the fold.
Dhillon of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is currently the sitting MLA from Gidderbaha. Having left the SAD and joined the AAP, he won the bypoll from this seat in November 2024, defeating Amrita Warring, wife of Warring, by 21,969 votes. Amrinder Singh Raja Warring was the MLA from here twice, but had to resign after becoming an MP from Ludhiana in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. He had won the Gidderbaha assembly seat in 2022 by a narrow margin of 1,349 votes, defeating Dhillon who was then in the SAD.
Sukhbir had won from Jalalabad three consecutive times in 2009 (bypoll), 2012 and 2017 before losing to an AAP candidate in the 2022 assembly polls. His move to Gidderbaha carries significance as the Badal family has deep roots in the constituency—his father, former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, served as the MLA from here for five consecutive terms from 1969 to 1985 before shifting to Lambi in 1997 (SAD had boycotted the elections in 1992).
After the byelection in 1995, Sukhbir's cousin Manpreet Singh Badal, who was earlier in the Akali Dal, had represented Gidderbaha for four consecutive terms before losing in 2012 to Warring. In last year’s bypoll, former state finance minister Manpreet, who is now in the BJP, could only get 12,227 votes.