On Saturday, BJP\'s Punjab leadership had more insults coming as the party\'s national president Rajnath Singh said he and L K Advani had given the go ahead to the move to make Sukhbir Badal the Deputy CM.
Now, it is official. Sukhbir Singh Badal will be sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister in Amritsar on Wednesday, January 21, in the presence of father Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. Sukhbir\'s brother-in-law (wife\'s brother) Bikramjit Singh Majithia is expected to resign on Sunday evening to create a slot in the Cabinet to adjust Sukhbir as the Constitution does not allow more than 18 ministers.
Governor S.F. Rodrigues has already been informed and his availability is assured. Massive preparations are now on to bring in hordes of party workers in buses and trucks to make it a mammoth affair in keeping with Sukhbir\'s grandiose style of functioning.
The Badals will be creating history in India by being the first father-son CM-Deputy CM duo. Sukhbir\'s cousin Manpreet Singh Badal is also a Minister in the Cabinet and holds the all important portfolio of Finance. Badal\'s son-in-law Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon is also a Cabinet Minister. Sukhbir too is likely to get heavyweight portfolios.
Even as sections of the media and political domain wondered about the virtually daring act of the Akali Dal to have a father-son duo as CM and Deputy CM in a state which has a coalition government, that too without taking the coalition partner into confidence, BJP\'s Punjab affairs incharge at the Centre, Arun Jaitley, counselled patience to his party men.
But for the Badals, the icing on the cake was a statement by Rajnath Singh who spilled the beans that the Parkash Singh Badal-Sukhbir Singh Badal duo had met him and Advani in Delhi a few days back and had sought the clearance of the BJP high command.
The revelations may have given Badal somerespite from the attacks from the state BJP but also exposes the crookedness involved. Neither father nor the son had earlier let it be known that the drama was pre-scripted. In fact, the demand to induct Sukhbir in the Cabinet was raised through smalltime Akali limpet leaders who together are derisively known in Punjab as the HAD - Haarya Akali Dal (Losers\' Akali Dal). These include Tota Singh, Gurdev Singh, Balwinder Singh Bhunder etc etc.
Sections of the media in Punjab, mostly perceived close to Sukhbir, indicated that he could be entrusted with portfolios of Home Affairs, Power, Housing and Urban Development, currently with the Chief Minister. The last independent Home Minister was Kanwaljit Singh; most of the time Home portfolio has rested with the CM in Punjab.
Bikramjit Singh Majithia
But Bikramjit Singh Majithia, making a grand show of self-sacrifice by issuing a statement that he will be only too willing and happy to make way for Sukhbir in the Cabinet, tried to become the metaphorical martyr by dipping his index finger in someone else\'s blood, to twist a Punjab phrase, but with the assurance that the magnanimous paterfamilias was likely to not allow such a sacrifice go unnoticed and he could be rewarded with a Lok Sabha ticket or a Rajya Sabha nomination.
Bikram Majithia currently had the departments of Information and Public Relations, Public Health and Science and Environment and of these, the PR is likely to stay with Sukhbir.
Punjab Cabinet already has 18 ministers and Indian Constitution does not permit more than 15 percent of MLAs in the state Assembly to become ministers. Punjab Assembly has 117 members.
Calibrated moves to concentrate all powers within the Badal family and its acolytes have been on for quite some time. No wonder Sukhbir\'s contribution to the election campaign in the last Assembly election was tom-tommed as something of an earthshaking achievement through massive advertisements and statements in the media. Later, he was made the acting party president after a sham-show of senior Akali leaders pleading with Badal Sr. to let them please have Sukhbir as leader of the Akali Dal.
Soon, there were demands at a PAC meeting that he made a full time President of the party.
Parkash Singh Badal looked utterly ridiculous as his tears had welled up and he \"had to agree\" to such a strong request from party members. Once Sukhbir was made the Akali Dal president, the family made a little discovery after reading about it all in the media. Sukhbir had made history by becoming the first president of Akali Dal, or of any faction of the Akali Dal, who was not an \'Amritdhari\'. For months, Sukhbir resisted getting himself baptised but then shrewd Badal Sr\'s advice prevailed and one fine morning, the man who celebrates everything in grand style, almost sneaked into a gurdwara to partake of Amrit, the ceremony kept very private lest it harmed the grand secular image of the Badals, earned with such dexterity by hob-nobbing with the RSS-BJP and participating in countless Aartis and Jagratas.
BJP says Deputy CM post irrelevant
Manoranjan Kalia
Coalition partner BJP which has 19 seats in the 117-strong Assembly and whose support is crucial to the survival of the Akali Dal, has now claimed that the Deputy CM post was irrelevant and should not be there at all.
Constitutionally, the Deputy CM post simply does not exist but across the country, ruling parties in states are known to create such a post as matter of political convenience. The same BJP which is now terming the Deputy CM office as \"irrelevant\" was in the news for many weeks asking that its Cabinet Minister Manoranjan Kalia be made the Deputy CM, a demand which the Akali Dal resisted and later had its way with the central leadership of the BJP.
The BJP leaders said they met many senior leaders in Delhi and have conveyed their views. The BJP is Punjab is particularly miffed at not being taken into confidence in the matter. So brash was the move from the House of Badals that a helicopter was specially sent to pick up limpets like Tota Singh and Gurdev Singh Badal from Takhtoopura so that they can come and raise the demand as per the pre-decided script in the Core Committee. When Parkash Singh Badal flew with Manoranjan Kalia the next day to Jalandhar, poor Kalia waited all through the 40 minutes of sortie for Badal to broach the subject but he kept mum.
\"I was expecting (Chief Minister) Badal Sahib to explain SAD\'s decision when both of us were travelling from Jalandhar to Chandigarh yesterday but he opted not to talk on the issue,\" Kalia later said.
Minutes later, in the presence of Kalia who had told reporters that no such proposal has come to the BJP, Badal not confirmed his son will be Deputy CM but also delivered a shocker by saying the BJP high command had already been informed and it will communicate to the BJP party leadership in the state.
Clearly, the BJP is justified in saying that the \"principles of an alliance have been violated\" but it remains a moot question whether the central leadership will allow it to plough its lone furrow.
The BJP tried to make another point by saying that in coalition governments, it had never happened that the larger partner walks away with both posts of CM and Deputy CM.
Two Deputy CMs offer rejected
The BJP has rejected the Akali Dal\'s offer of having two Deputy CM. Sukhbir\'s elevation immediately reduces the stature of BJP\'s Manoranjan Kalia who was virtually conducting himself as a Deputy CM and whose mug hitherto stared out of all government advertisements even though he is only a Cabinet minister.
It is not clear from which seat will Sukhbir, currently an MP, will fight an assembly election but it could well be Bikramjit Majithia\'s seat.
Interestingly, and ironically, the move to make Sukhbir a Deputy CM came close on the heels of senior Akali Minister Capt Kanwaljit Singh underlining the resentment within the Akali Dal over the undue projection of Sukhbir Badal as the only leader who counts. Kanwaljit had said that Sukhbir\'s political fate was connected to the outcome of Parliamentary elections, a phase that the Akalis are likely to find tough.
Later, Kanwaljit did not press the point beyond a point, a strategy that he has perfected every time he wants to make a point, but clearly the point was either not registered or is now being outscored.
20 January 2009
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