A day after Shiromani Akali Dal suspended its MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and his son Parminder Singh Dhindsa, three Punjab Ministers launched a scathing attack on the SAD leadership alleging the party “had been reduced to the personal fiefdom of the Badals”.
A decision to suspend the two Akali leaders was taken on Saturday at a meeting of the party’s core committee which was presided over by the SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal. It was unanimously decided to recommend the expulsion of the father-son duo for indulging in “anti-party activities”.
“The SAD is in complete disarray, particularly in the post Prakash Singh Badal era,” they said pointing to the rebellion by the Dhindsa father-son duo and their subsequent suspension from the party. “The Dhindsas had openly revolted against the stifling control of SAD by the Badals, declaring their intent to liberate the party from the family and revive its lost glory,” the Congress Ministers said in a joint statement here on Sunday.
They claimed that the whole episode showed the mounting disillusionment within the party against Sukhbir’s leadership and the lack of democracy prevailing in it. “If senior leaders of the party are so unhappy with the leadership and loss of ideology, one can only imagine how dissatisfied the ordinary workers would be,” they quipped.
The Cabinet Ministers, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa (Rural Development & Panchayats), Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria (Housing and Urban Development) and Gurpreet Singh Kangar (Revenue) also criticised Sukhbir’s wife and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal for her presence at the “meetings of SAD’s core committee, despite not being its member.”
