The ruling party in Punjab Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has decided to hold the hands of its age-old ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to tread cautiously on Delhi’s political turf in the Assembly polls and has agreed to its share of four seats out of the total 70.
After lot of ups and downs, the deadlock between the two alliance partners over seat sharing ended on Wednesday with the BJP agreeing to give four Sikh-dominated seats, including one of its stronghold, to the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for December 4 polls in Delhi. The party would now field its candidates in alliance with that of BJP on four seats — Hari Nagar, Shahdara, Rajouri Garden and Kalkaji.
There are around seven per cent Sikh voters in Delhi. Akali Dal received a shot in the arm in 2012 municipal elections bagging six of the seven seats it contested, and then capturing Gurudwara elections in Delhi early this year where its candidates won 37 of the 46 seats. Riding high on the success wave in Delhi, SAD (Badal) has been insisting upon increasing its share of seats from the previous count of four. The Akali Dal has been demanding 12 seats in total.
Akali Dal, in fact, had recently decided not to forge an alliance with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partner, and decade-old ally in Punjab by contesting on 12 Sikh-dominated seats “on its own symbol” “independently”. Calling it as “nothing but pressure tactics on the part of Akalis”, the BJP had brushed off the issue as there were seats where the saffron party has a hold and has sitting MlAs and the party would not like to trade those seats with allies. Reluctant BJP did not want to give away Tilak Nagar and Hari Nagar — two of its strongholds. But finally, it had to let go of Hari Nagar.
The consensus was reached during Wednesday’s high-level meeting between BJP national president Rajnath Singh and senior party leaders including lal Krishna Advani, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Venjeya Naidu, and Ramlal; while SAD was represented by party general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Gujral, party’s Delhi unit chief Manjit Singh GK, and in-charge of party affairs Balwant Singh Ramoowalia.
“We are happy that the party has got two seats in West Delhi, where the Sikh population is high. We are hopeful that the party would be able to bag all four seats, and perform the way it did during Delhi Sikh Gurudwara management Committee elections” Manjit Singh GK told The Pioneer. During 2008 Assembly polls, the two parties had similar seat-sharing arrangement with the Akali Dal contesting on four seats — Rajouri Garden, Shahdara, Jangpura and Adarsh Nagar. The party lost all seats then — seen as an apparent reason for the BJP to give away its stronghold seats.
GK said earlier, there were some issues regarding sharing of seats but “everything has been amicably resolved in today’s meeting”. “We wanted to contest from Tilak Nagar constituency also…but now the issue has been resolved with consensus and we would work to win all seats in coalition with the BJP,” he added.
Giving credit to the party president Sukhbir Badal, GK said that two seats from West Delhi was the result of efforts put in by him. “Sukhbir Badal will decide upon the names of the candidates and the party symbol as the BJP’s national president Rajnath Singh has empowered him to take the decision whether the party wanted to contest polls on lotus — symbol of BJP, or the scale — SAD’s symbol.