Time for son to rise in Punjab too: Tale of Badals and Yadavs

The Assembly polls, wrongly or rightly billed as the semi-finals before the 2014 general elections, saw the rise of “son power” – Sukhbir Badal in Punjab and Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.

While both of them were around in politics for a while and by no stretch of imagination could be termed as greenhorns, this was the first election in which they made a mark for themselves, scripted the plot for the victory of their respective parties and rightly got due credit in their states.

Sukhbir Badal, who will turn 50 this July, practically took the command of the 92-year old Shiromani Akali Dal, founded in 1920 to free the Gurudwaras from the Mahants, three years before the assembly elections as President of the party. There were murmurs initially in perhaps the oldest regional party of the country when he was made the President but he showed his leadership skills by effectively wooing the Jathedars and religious leaders, giving them due respect and authority locally. In the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) elections, held in September 2011, SAD in alliance with the Sant Samaj swept the polls, completely crushing the opposition, backed by the Congress. In a way, the SGPC election was the first test which he passed successfully. He never looked behind and gradually made his way up in the party to gain the confidence of the core vote bank of the Akali Dal.

At the age of 85 while Parkash Singh Badal has more or less given the leadership mantle to Sukhbir, assuming the role of an elder statesman, except for the post of the chief minister, it is the other way round in Uttar Pradesh.

In the biggest state of the country, which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha, the veteran socialist Mulayam Singh Yadav realised that his brand of politics has few takers amongst the youth. He found a youth mascot in his son Akhilesh Yadav who showed tremendous political potential in the run-up to the polls with his youthful exuberance. People had seen the unimpressive rule of Mulayam Singh in the state for quite a while and except for his role as an “aggressive secularist”, which endeared him to the Muslim voters, he is hardly credited with any development worth remembering. In fact, his image was tarred by the goonda elements having a field day in entire Uttar Pradesh during his tenure which helped Bahujan Samaj Party come to power on its own in the 2007 polls.

In such a situation, Akhilesh came as a fresh breeze - a perfect spoiler for both the aggressive campaign of Rahul Gandhi and the caste arithmetic of Mayawati. Here, the senior Yadav let the junior Yadav become the chief minister but has held on to the reins of power in his hands. The Cabinet, more or less, is the one which Mulayam would have had if he were the chief minister. The bureaucracy too is exactly the way he wants and comprises his favourites at top positions. It will take some time for Akhilesh to get out of the shadows of his father and stamp his authority in the government. It could even be Mulayam’s method to teach the tricks of the trade to his son, who is holding any government post for the first time.

This is what Sukhbir in Punjab has already done. His stamp is there, right from the distribution of Departments to the Ministers, post swearing in to the selection of the top officials in the state. Even before Departments were allotted to ministers, Sukhbir changed the Director General of Police and brought in Sumedh Singh Saini, an official with whom he is comfortable working with. He changed the chief secretary and also brought in his favourite police officials to head the districts, summarily transferring the IPS officers brought in by the Election Commission during the model code of conduct to insignificant positions. He selected the candidates for the Assembly polls and before that for the SGPC polls, drew the electoral strategy and did the micro management which led to the unprecedented victory of the party for the second time in a row.

While Sukhbir did micro management in Punjab, Akhilesh was the mascot of the party in UP and left micro management to his father, Mulayam Singh. Akhilesh rode on his rath, took out rallies and connected to the youth, the anti-incumbency voters and the floating voters. With the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) combination, assiduously built by the senior Yadav intact, SP rode to power again in Lucknow.

Even if he is gradually making the way for his son, the senior Badal in Punjab brilliantly complemented Sukhbir in the run up to the polls. Many term him as the mascot of the Akali Dal now with the real power passing on to his son. The aggressiveness and innovative strategies of the junior Badal complimented the patience, humility and greater acceptance which the senior Badal enjoys amongst the core Jat Sikh, rural voters and the Gurudwara based panthic organisations, including the SGPC.

A section of the Akali leaders in Punjab believe that the senior Badal could make the way for Sukhbir much before the next elections in 2017, something like Mulayam Singh did in UP by installing his son to the top job. But this is not going to happen in a hurry. There could be a possibility of chief minister Badal moving to central politics after 2014 general elections if the NDA is voted to power. Till then, the arrangement where he does not have to strain himself in day to day affairs and take hard political decisions and Sukhbir runs the show both in the government as Deputy Chief Minister and the party as its President, would continue.

In UP, the senior Yadav hardly has a national role as of now as his best hope of being the leader of a Third or Fourth Front is a distant dream. There is no such entity on the ground nor there in the realm of possibility in the near future, more so when SP is closely aligned to the UPA even though it is not a part of the government. SP had bailed out the Manmohan Singh government on the nuclear deal issue after the Left walked out and has overtly and covertly supported the UPA in the second tenure whenever the need arose during voting in Parliament. The irony is that coming from a party whose existence draws strength from being anti-Congress, party supremo Mulayam Singh would find it extremely difficult to explain to his core vote bank if he moved on to the government even if Mamata Banerjee withdraws support.

With the Badals firmly ensconced in Punjab and the Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh for the next five years, they will be itching to have a bigger space at the national level. SAD’s space is well known – as one of the longest serving alliance partner of the BJP, it is SP which will have to find a role for itself in the run-up to the 2014 polls. (March 18, 2012)

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