April 26,2023: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday visited Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) party office in Chandigarh to pay his last respects to Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. The 95-year-old politician passed away on Tuesday after being hospitalised in Mohali a week back.
He recalled numerous conversations with the SAD patriarch ‘in which his wisdom was always clearly seen’ and described Badal as a ‘remarkable statesman who contributed greatly to our nation, worked tirelessly for progress of Punjab’.
The Centre has announced a two-day state mourning across India as a mark of respect to the veteran politician.
The five-time chief minister climbed his way up the political ladder after serving as a village sarpanch and then contesting assembly elections for the first time in 1957.
Only recently, Badal’s party broke ties with BJP in the wake of farmers’ protest in 2020. He also returned his Padma Vibhushan award – the second highest civilian honour of the country – as a sign of protest against the government’s treatment of protesting farmers.
Badal was the youngest chief minister of the country when he first took charge at age 43 in 1970. Badal was the oldest to helm a state when he was sworn in for a fifth term in 2012 at the age of 83. With more than 70 years of experience in political life, Badal often used to call himself a ‘Doctor of Politics’.
Born in a Jatt Sikh family in Abul Khurana village near Malout in 1927, Badal began his political career as the Sarpanch of his native village Badal in 1947. He was just 20 when he became Sarpanch, India had just become Independent and Punjab had just emerged from a catastrophic partition.
However through his tenacity and ability to impress people, Badal rose in politics – becoming chairman of the block Samiti in Lambi and then an MLA at the age of 30. He was initially with the Congress but later shifted to the Akali Dal.
Badal also became an active part of the Punjabi Suba movement for the creation of an autonomous Punjabi-majority state. At that time, present day Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were also part of Punjab. The movement finally led to the creation of the three states in 1966.
By this time Badal had become a prominent leader in the Akali Dal and both Badal and his party rose in the changed dynamics of the new state.
He became a minister in 1969 and chief minister in 1970, heading a coalition of Akali Dal-Fateh Singh and the Jana Sangh, precursor to the BJP. But the government didn’t last long as the Jana Sangh withdrew support to Badal over the position of Hindi in Punjab.
As Leader of Opposition in Punjab, Badal became one of the main architects of the protests against the Emergency and he had to spend considerable time in prison under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act. But he became CM again in 1977.
