CHANDIGARH: The Akalis were not out of the poll process forever and could contest future elections, the Akali Dal (Badal) president, Parkash Singh Badal, said here.

We had boycotted the February elections in Punjab as a protest, but this does not mean that we have renounced the democratic process,” the Akali leader said at a new conference. He was asked if the Akalis would contest the proposed municipal and panchayat elections in the state. He, however, added that the Akalis had never contested the panchayat elections on party symbol.

Asked how would he justify the Akali participation in a future panchayat poll after supporting the quit panchayats movement of the panthic organizations, Badal said this was also a protest against the fake elections held in the state,

Referring to the slogan of “united or Meha Punjab” raised by the Chief Minister, Beant Singh, Badal said it was a “nefarious and mischievous” move which had been made once by the Haryana Chief Minister, Bhajan Lal. It was a matter of great concern that Beant Singh had asked for the creation of Maha Punjab comprising Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. “It seems that both the Congress (I) Chief Ministers are in collusion and have started this Machiavellian politics at the behest of their masters in Delhi,” he said.

The Akali leader pointed out that the principle of linguistic state was accepted by the Congress at the AICC session in Lahore in 1929, After the Independence linguistic states were created except in Punjab. The Punjabi speaking state came into existence after great sacrifices but it was a “truncated Punjabi saba which was created in 1966 because of the communal and discriminatory policies of the Congress” he said and warned that the Akali Dal would not allow dismantling of the Punjabi-speaking state. The gimmick started by Beant Singh was to cover the failure of the government to solve the Punjab problem.

Answering questions, Badal claimed that the Akalis wanted Punjabi speaking areas left out at the time of the reorganization whether they were inhabited by the Hindus or the Muslims,

We had always wanted Punjabi-speaking areas and not the Sikh majority areas and even now would like these areas left in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan with Punjab,” he said. The Akali leader is of the view that Beant Singh had taken a strong stand on the river waters issue only to fool the people of Punjab and would yield to the pressure of the Center as the late Chief Minister, Darbara Singh, had done in 1981 by withdrawing the river waters case from the Supreme Court and getting a raw deal for the state.

The Akali leader refuted the Chief Minister’s charge that he had been inciting people and said he had been going to the masses to safeguard the interests of the state as a democratic right. He said Beant Singh would see the following of the panthic organizations at the Ludhiana rally on August 30 unless he resorted to the undemocratic step of creating hurdles in the way of those wanting to attend it According to him, it was a government not the Akalis which was adopting a course of confrontation.

Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 14, 1992