They have shared the same political stage for more than a decade, but hummed different tunes on contentious issues. And, now when parliamentary polls are just round the corner, both Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are making attempts to sing in unison.
Both the parties are trying to strike a cord with the voters by attempting to sing the common man’s duet after ironing out their mutual differences.
Filling in the gaps that has widened over the years, the coalition partners are now putting their heads together in the region-wise meetings between the two parties almost every week.Punjab Chief Minister and SAD patron-in-chief Parkash Singh Badal is moderating these meetings with the State presidents of both parties, members of parliament (MPs), members of legislative assembly (MlAs), and the district presidents of the respective region. “We are holding regular zone-wise meetings of Doaba, Majha and Malwa. Considering Malwa is a bigger region, it has been divided into two zones. The main purpose is to start galvanizing the party cadres for the parliamentary polls, and enable better coordination between the two parties,” state BJP president Kamal Sharma told The Pioneer.
Even after trudging on the road to success by repeating its Government in Punjab for the record second consecutive time, the relation between the two alliance partners has been hitting a rough patch on several issues since then.The age-old allies have differences on several issues. The recent among them are “exorbitant” fees to regularise colonies, implementation of e-Trip system, seat sharing in recently-held Panchayati Raj elections, imposing taxes in urban areas - BJP’s vote bank, among others.To iron out these differences, the two parties have been making attempts to improve their relations while monitoring and gearing up the party cadre for the all-important lok Sabha polls, scheduled to be held in 2014.
In the same direction, the SAD-led State Government has apparently agreed to provide respite to the traders and colonisers by slackening the norms under e-trip system, and policy for regularisation of unauthorised colonies buckling under BJP’s pressure.All the same, Kamal Sharma is of the view that just as the BJP share different viewpoint with the SAD on certain issues, “it is good for democracy. The differences are good, but it should not reach a breaking point, like in our case. With a statesman like Badal ji, everything between the two settles amicably”.
In fact, Kamal Sharma has just three words to define relation between the two coalition partners - “All is well”.Notwithstanding, the two allies are at loggerheads on the issue of introducing more taxes, including professional tax in the urban areas. Rather, the saffron party is in favour of rationalizing agriculture subsidy by extending free power to small and marginal farmers, and leaving out the big ones.Earlier, the Akali Dal’s support to the Khalistani militants Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Balwant Singh Rajoana and pleas of mercy for them had proved fatal for the amicable relationship between the two considering BJP’s national stand against terrorism.
Apart from that, fissures between them also came forth on the issues of implementation of property tax, entry tax, high power tariff, VAT on sugar, textile, flour etc, deciding Mayors for municipal corporations, appointment of improvement trusts’ chairmen, seat sharing or candidates’ selection in Panchayati Raj elections that, in fact, saw the two coalition partners contesting against each other.From that fact, in addition of holding region-wise parties’ meetings, the alliance is planning to revive the state level joint coordination committee to fine-tune the relations between the two.
In fact, the SAD-BJP is also planning to go-back to its year-old resolve to set up these joint coordination committees of both the parties at district level too. These committees were expected to meet once a month to resolve the issues at state and grass root level respectively.While the state-level coordination committees were formed time and again to sort out specific issues, the district-level committees never came into being.
Kamal Sharma, who bespoke for “bettering” relationship between the coalition partners by taking the state-level coordination committee to the district level at the time of taking over the charge of state BJP president, maintained that these committees “would soon come into being at both state and district level”.“State-level committee has been formed comprising SAD’s Daljeet Singh Cheema and BJP’s Tikshan Sud, we would revive the same. Besides, district level committees would also be formed soon to further strengthen the alliance, and for better implementation of strategies,” he said.