SAD (Anandpur Sahib) set for Maghi Mela launch, Amritpal’s father to be its president

Khalistan sympathiser and Khadoor Sahib Lok Sabha MP Amritpal Singh’s team on Saturday picked Shiromani Akali Dal (Anandpur Sahib) as the name of their political outfit, which will be headed by his father Tarsem Singh.

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Faridkot Lok Sabha MP Sarabjit Singh Khalsa, who is the son of one of the assassins of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, said the party will be formally launched on January 14 during their “Panth Bachao, Punjab Bachao” Conference at Maghi Mela in Muktsar.

Amritpal’s father will be its president, he added.

The announcement came a day after a close aide of Amritpal — who is currently lodged in the Assam’s Dibrugarh jail under the stringent National Security Act — said the party’s name will contain words “Akali Dal”.

In a meeting at Gurdwara Patshahi Dasvin in Kotkapura, Khalsa said the party aims to provide a political alternative to the people of Punjab, with a mission to seek “more state rights” and end the drug menace by focusing on youth welfare.

The party will target people committed to Punjab’s well-being and actively work to wean youngsters away from drugs. The upcoming conference will mark a significant milestone in the political landscape of Punjab, he claimed.

The move to name the outfit as such is being seen as an attempt to grab the Panthic space from Punjab’s former ruling party Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), whose vote base among the Sikhs has shrunk in recent years.

Once a dominant entity in the Punjab politics, the SAD faced a string of controversies in recent years over its conduct on the issues concerning the Sikh community during its rule from 2007-17.

Its president and former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal recently suffered an assassination bid while undergoing a religious punishment awarded to him by the Akal Takht — the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs — for the mistakes committed by his government during its decade-long rule.

The later part of the SAD regime, which ruled in alliance with the BJP, was marked by incidents of desecration of religious texts and subsequent police firing on protesters that resulted in the death of persons in 2015.

The SAD’s image took a hit after the incidents, resulting in decline in its political fortunes that reduced its tally in the Punjab Assembly to just three, with Sukhbir himself losing the election from Jalalabad.

The stiffest resistance to Sukhbir’s leadership came from senior Akali leaders, who formed a reform movement, SAD Sudhar Lehar, in the party, culminating in Sukhbir’s resignation from the president’s post, which is yet to accepted by the party working committee.