Analysis: Akali Dal's Battle To Reclaim Panthic Strongholds

Shiromani Akali Dal is trying to recover the Panthic strongholds it once dominated by reversing the dynastic style that drove senior leaders out. After years of Badal centralisation pushed nine senior party leaders out of which three have died.

The prominent leaders who had left the party include figures such as Balwinder Singh Bains and Simarjeet Singh Bains left in 2016 to form the Lok Insaaf Party. In December 2018, Ranjit Singh Brahmpura, Rattan Singh Ajnala and Sewa Singh Sekhwan co-founded the Shiromani Akali Dal (Taksali). In 2020, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and his son Parminder Singh Dhindsa revived the Shiromani Akali Dal (Democratic); the following year they merged it with Brahmpura's faction to create the Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).

Bibi Jagir Kaur was expelled in 2022 after contesting the SGPC presidential election against the official candidate and later aligned with rebel reform groups. In August 2025, former Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh became president of the rebel Shiromani Akali Dal (Punar Surjit). Of these nine, three have since died: Ranjit Singh Brahmpura, Sewa Singh Sekhwan and Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.Only one of the nine is described as ready to return. Bibi Jagir Kaur announced in November 2026 that she would rejoin the Badal-led SAD. The remaining living leaders are still associated with the breakaway groups they helped create or now lead.

Akali Dal was now trying to bring back the same leaders back and reactivating the SGPC network. Their return is meant to rebuild local organisation and restore trust before 2027. What remains to be seen is whether the voters will treat the move as real change or a late cosmetic fix.

READ | Analysis: Why Panthic Politics Is At A Crossroads In Punjab

For more than a century, the party treated Sikh religious politics as its own ground. It spoke for the Panth, ran the SGPC network, and turned rural Punjab into a reliable electoral base. That claim no longer holds. The party is fighting an open battle for relevance. The numbers show how far the ground has shifted under it.

Between 2007 and 2012, the SAD-BJP alliance formed back-to-back governments. SAD's own vote share slipped by roughly 2.3 percentage points across those two elections, yet its seats rose from 48 to 56. The alliance held. In 2017, the fall began in earnest. After a decade of anti-incumbency, SAD's vote share dropped nearly 9.5 percentage points, and its seats collapsed from 56 to 15. It finished behind both Congress and the new Aam Aadmi Party. By 2022, having left the NDA over the farm laws and contested with the BSP, its vote share fell another 6.86 points to 18.38 per cent. The party won only three seats. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the share fell further to 13.4 per cent, with Bathinda the sole win.

The erosion runs wider than the headline figures. Across the 93 to 97 seats SAD itself contested between 2007 and 2022, its vote share fell sharply in more than 80 constituencies. In its old strongholds, the winning average had stood between 42 and 48 per cent in 2007-12. In 2022, that range had dropped to 12-22 per cent. Candidates forfeited their deposits in more than 45 seats, including several traditional ones in Malwa and Majha. The party did not simply lose elections. It lost the places where it had once been the default choice.

The single largest rupture came in 2015. Incidents of sacrilege (beadbi) of the Guru Granth Sahib in Faridkot, police firing on protesters at Behbal Kalan, and the controversial pardon granted to Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh convinced many rural Sikh voters that the party had traded religious principle for political convenience. That wound never fully closed. Even after the leadership later sought forgiveness at Akal Takht, the memory stayed. Rivals moved into the space the party left open.

The farm laws deepened the damage. SAD eventually broke with the BJP in September 2020, yet its early defence of the central ordinances alienated the Jat Sikh peasantry in Malwa, the same belt that had supplied both the farmers' agitation and much of the old Akali cadre. The exit from the NDA removed one problem and created another. Without the BJP, the party lost easy access to urban Hindu voters in Doaba, Northern Majha, Puadh, Western Border Malwa, Pathankot, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr), Fazilka, Gurdaspur, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Patiala, Rajpura, SAS Nagar (Mohali), Dera Bassi, Kharar, Kapurthala, Phagwara, Rupnagar, Nangal, Anandpur Sahib, Ferozepur, and Bathinda. Non-Jat voters in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Patiala also did not trust SAD. Re-allying with the BJP risks reviving rural anger. Staying alone leaves the urban arithmetic weak. Neither option restores the old coalition.

A decade in power from 2007 to 2017 added its own weight. Allegations of syndicates controlling sand mining, transport and cable networks, together with the spread of synthetic drugs called chitta across rural Punjab, turned governance into a liability. Anti-incumbency was not abstract. It sat in villages where families had watched young men disappear into addiction and where local contractors appeared to answer to one political family. Critics inside the party also accused the Badals of centralising power and sidelining Taksali leaders. High-profile exits (Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Ranjit Singh Brahampura, Sewa Singh Sekhwan, and for a time Bibi Jagir Kaur) hollowed out local organisation. The cadre did not simply switch. Much of it stopped working.

AAP walked into the vacuum. It took the anti-establishment vote, the youth vote, and large parts of rural Malwa that had once swung between Congress and SAD. Punjab's old bipolar contest broke. SAD was no longer the natural alternative to Congress. It became one of several claimants in a crowded field.

The party has not given up. The return of Bibi Jagir Kaur, a former SGPC president with influence in Doaba and seats such as Bholath, is part of a deliberate effort to rebuild. Her earlier departure had weakened organisational links in that belt. Bringing her back, and reaching out to other estranged Taksali figures, is meant to restart booth-level work that collapsed after 2017 and 2022. The SGPC network remains the party's strongest institutional asset. Leaders who still command respect in gurdwara committees can reopen channels to rural voters that pure electoral machinery no longer reaches.

Organisational repair does not automatically restore Panthic trust. The party once mixed Sikh religious assertion, federal demands and agrarian welfare into a single appeal. After 2015 that mix cracked. Internal reconciliation panels and apologies at Akal Takht have tried to close the chapter. Voters, however, now weigh other things more heavily: farm distress, unemployment, industrial stagnation and the drug crisis. Historical ownership of Panthic language is no longer enough if the party cannot show it can govern those problems. Younger voters in particular treat the old script as background noise.

The Panthic space itself has fragmented. SAD no longer holds a monopoly. Hardline voices such as Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh's Akali Dal Waris Punjab De, Faridkot MP Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, and Simranjit Singh Mann's SAD (Amritsar) split the conservative Sikh vote in Majha and parts of Malwa. In a first-past-the-post system, that split is costly. Even a recovery from 18 per cent to 24 per cent statewide may not produce many seats if the anti-incumbency vote remains divided among AAP, Congress, BJP and several Panthic groups. Malwa's 69 constituencies are decisive. Without consolidation there, modest gains elsewhere will not restore the party to power.

Leadership credibility is the remaining obstacle. Reconciliation drives signal openness, yet many voters still see decision-making as tightly held by one family. Until that perception shifts, the return of senior figures looks more like damage control than structural change. The party can still attract experienced politicians. Turning their presence into votes requires something harder: proof that internal reform is real and that a revived SAD can offer both Panthic continuity and a workable answer to the economic pressures of present-day Punjab.

The 2027 election will test whether any of this is enough. A section of the farming community and rural traders may be tired of successive experiments and open to a regional party that claims to understand Punjab's federal interests without constant reference to Delhi. That fatigue exists. It does not automatically flow back to SAD. The party's battle for Panthic survival is real. The data from its old strongholds shows how much ground has already been lost. Recovery depends on whether the organisation can be rebuilt, the trust deficit narrowed, and the fragmented Panthic vote partially reclaimed before the next assembly poll. Nothing in the recent record suggests that outcome is assured.

How much the SGPC can help Akali Dal if its candidates win :

If Shiromani Akali Dal candidates keep the SGPC general house and presidency, the party holds on to its last major institutional lever. That control still counts. Its value at the ballot box is narrower than it once was.

Winning the SGPC elections keeps the gurdwara network open. Local members and committees remain one of the few organised routes into rural Sikh villages after booth-level work collapsed in large parts of the state after 2017 and 2022. The presidency and executive also let the party present itself as the manager of historic gurdwaras and linked Takht appointments. That claim helps when leaders such as Bibi Jagir Kaur are brought back or when organisational work is restarted. The body controls funds, property and staff that can support cadre movement, religious events and local outreach in ways party funds alone no longer cover. A clear result, such as the 117 votes out of 136 taken by the SAD-backed candidate in one recent contest, lets the leadership talk of organisational strength while assembly and Lok Sabha numbers stay low.

The same years of continued SGPC dominance produced the opposite result at the polls. Vote share in the old strongholds fell from a 42-48 per cent winning average in 2007-12 to 12-22 per cent in 2022. Candidates forfeited deposits in more than 45 seats. The 2024 Lok Sabha share dropped further to 13.4 per cent. Hardline groups (Amritpal Singh's Waris Punjab De, Simranjit Singh Mann's SAD Amritsar and others) and the Aam Aadmi Party now compete for the same rural Sikh voters. Holding the house does not stop them from splitting the conservative vote in Majha and Malwa.

The 2015 sacrilege cases, the Behbal Kalan firing, the Dera pardon and the farm-laws break damaged the party's moral standing. Institutional control does not erase that memory or the view that decisions remain centred on one family. Even if the network helps lift the vote share from the current low teens toward 24 per cent, a four-way contest involving AAP, Congress, the BJP and multiple Panthic groups can still leave the party short of seats. Malwa's 69 constituencies remain decisive. Full SGPC elections have been delayed for years. Only 136 members voted in recent presidential contests. A win locks in the existing house. It does not refresh the public mandate or reach new voters.

An SGPC victory keeps the party inside the religious structure and gives it a practical base for organisational repair. It does not restore the Panthic monopoly once held, and it does not turn institutional presence into assembly seats. The help is real. It is also secondary. The test is whether returning leaders, the gurdwara network and any recovery in rural organisation can narrow the trust gap before 2027. The recent electoral record offers no clear sign that this will happen.