Chandigarh: 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".
Dhindsa and his son Parminder had been vocal against Sukhbir.
"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.
The Congress Ministers alleged the SAD had been clearly reduced to the personal fiefdom of the Badals.
The Akali Dal has lost the credibility under the unprincipled, unethical and corrupt leadership of the Badals, who had lost all political integrity and had cut off the party from the grassroots in order to promote their selfish personal interests, they claimed.
The Ministers stressed that it was time for the Badals to step down from the SAD and hand over the party reins to those who remain committed to the Akali ideology.
Else the Akalis would be completely wiped out from the face of Punjab (and Indian) polity, they warned.
"It is ironic that the very Akalis, who had historically fought to free the Gurdwaras from the hereditary control of the Mahants (the traditional clergy that had become extremely powerful and ritualised in the early 20th century) were now being led by a similar hereditary command structure under the Badals.
What is the difference between the heredity promoted by those Mahants in British India and the Badals, who were openly and brazenly nurturing a similar culture to ensure that the control of the SAD remains with the family? they asked.
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