Chandigarh, Jun 12 : In a bid to wrest power from the Congress party in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Saturday announced to contest the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state as alliance partners.
Announcing this at a joint press conference with the BSP here, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal said BSP will contest elections on 20 seats out of the 117 seats. These 20 include eight seats from the Doaba region, seven in Malwa and five in Majha.
“This is a new day in Punjab politics as Shiromani Akali Dal is forming an alliance with the BSP after 25 years and will continue this alliance even in future,” the SAD chief said.
BSP leader and Rajya Sabha Member Satish Mishra termed it as a ‘historic’ alliance. “Both the parties have same ideologies and have been fighting for the rights of farmers, labourers and Dalits,” he said.
Notably, Akali Dal had parted ways from the Bharatiya Janata Party on September 26, last year, to register its protest against the saffron party’s decision to enact the three agricultural reform laws in the country. Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal had tendered her resignation from the Union Cabinet as Food Processing Minister, just 10 days before the SAD-BJP severed their decades-old ties.
So, according to political pundits, it was very crucial for the SAD to have an alliance partner for the 2022 election.
Pertinent to mention here that in the SAD-BSP alliance, BSP has got fewer seats than what BJP got in the 2017 elections. The saffron party, five years ago, contested 23 seats.
In a bid to woo the 31 per cent Dalit vote bank of the state, Badal, today, promised of working for the downtrodden sections of the society if voted back to power. “We will ensure the welfare of the disadvantaged sections of society and farmers besides working to develop the trade and industry to bring the State’s economy back on track,” he averred.
He also mentioned that his father and former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal always developed places of worship of all religions and had developed Bhagwan Valmiki temple at Amritsar besides starting Rs 200 crore project to develop the Guru Ravidasji memorial at Khuralgarh which he alleged was stopped by the Congress government.
SAD’s newly formed ally — BSP’s leader Satish Mishra accused the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh-led Congress government in the state of discriminating against Dalits by not releasing funds reserved for Scheduled Castes to them, deleting lakhs of Aata – Daal and Old age pension cards, not filling SC and OBC vacancies, not releasing SC scholarship fee to students and not implementing the Shagun scheme and houses for the houseless scheme.
Mishra also trained guns towards the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is currently the principal opposition in Punjab.
Both the leaders — Badal and Mishra — maintained that they would struggle hand in hand to ensure the three “anti farmer” agriculture laws were not implemented.
Mishra also trained guns towards the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is currently the principle opposition in Punjab.
Both the leaders — Badal and Mishra — maintained that they would struggle hand in hand to ensure the three “anti farmer” agriculture laws were not implemented.
