Even as the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has been maintaining that it would contest the ensuing civic body polls in Punjab in alliance with its time and tested ally — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the saffron brigade is in rebellious mood and may demand more seats.
In the State BJP’s meeting of party’s office bearers, district units heads, among others held on Tuesday, the party leaders expressed their resentment over SAD’s “repeated” attempts to denigrate them in terms of power sharing.
A majority of BJP leaders, “piqued” by ‘dominant’ SAD, maintained that the party should ask for more seats to contest forthcoming civic body polls, besides fielding its candidates from all newly-carved out seats as a result of delimitation of wards.
Giving a clear-cut message that it would no more play a second fiddle in coalition, the BJP leaders proposed that in case SAD would not agree to give more seats to the saffron party, they should field its candidates on all seats, even against that of the SAD.
However, the party on Tuesday announced that it would contest municipality polls on its symbol, the lotus, whether in alliance or not. The polls are scheduled to be held in November-December.
On the other hand, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his deputy son and SAD president Sukhbir Badal has maintained that the SAD-BJP alliance would contest coming civic body polls in the state “together, as per its traditional seat sharing formula”.
Badal maintained that the necessary strategy for contesting these polls would be chalked out soon by the top brass of both the alliance partners. The bonding between the two coalition partners hit a rough patch after combine’s “not-so-good” performance in the lok Sabha elections.
The BJP, which won two out of the three seats in contested, blamed the SAD for defeat of its senior leader Arun Jaitley because of party’s poor image owing to alleged involvement of its leaders in drug trade. Time and again, the BJP ministers have been accusing the SAD of taking major decision on its own or by overlooking their opposition or suggestions.
In Tuesday meeting, more than 20 district presidents, out of total 33, sent their message across to the state BJP leadership that they want their say in the party and would not tolerate bullying tactics of the SAD.
“SAD takes a major share of seats, and where SAD fields its candidates, they field dummy candidates to harm our prospects,” alleged a BJP leader during the meeting.
The leader went on to add that if such thing happed again, the party would field dummy candidates against all Akali candidates. Responding to the demands, state BJP president Kamal Sharma said that the leaders are charged up and excited about civic polls after forming the national government.
On the demands of contesting civic polls independently and demanding more seats in its share, Sharma said that it was already apprehended that the distribution of new seats would create a problem among the allies.
“I have talked to the Chief Minister and SAD president in this regard and proposed that every district should have a senior leader each from both parties to look after the division of seats. In case the conflict increases, the matter should be resolved at the level of party chiefs,” he said.