One of the oldest partners of the BJP — the Shiromani Akali Dal — which has been with it through thick and thin for decades, finally quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Saturday, signaling a complete political break from its past on the three farm Bills passed by Parliament early this week.

Eyeing the March 2022 Assembly elections which is expected to be fought on the Farm Bills, SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal announced the decision to part with NDA after a meeting of the core committee of the party here saying the decision was taken due to injustice to farmers, Sikhs, Punjab and Punjabi language.

“In the last two months, our attempt was to make aware the Central Government, the sentiments of the people of Punjab. But with regret we have to say that the Bill was passed with brute force…You know what happened in the Rajya Sabha…Our Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal had resigned earlier in protest,”  Badal said late in the evening.

He said the party took a conscious decision after talking to the party workers, talking to the farmers and people of the state. “For the last few days, I have been talking to everybody… The entire leadership of the Akali Dal has decided not to be a part of the NDA which has brought Ordinances and Bills which are against Punjab and farmers,” he said.

Badal also referred to the Jammu & Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020, in which Punjabi was not recognized as an official language in the Union Territory which has a sizeable number of Punjabi speaking people.

After the resignation of Harsimrat Kaur from the Narendra Modi Cabinet, SAD had been raising the twin issues of the Farm Bills and the status of Punjabi language publically. He had repeatedly lashed out at the BJP for “misusing” its “brute majority” to pass bills in the Parliament.

 “Dr Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference, who is a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, supported me and said that a sizable number of Kashmiris also spoke Punjabi. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has also supported the inclusion of Punjabi as an official language in the union territory,” he said earlier.

Terming the entire development as a “sad day for democracy”, Sukhbir said that the founding fathers of the Constitution were inspired by a vision of India as a multi religious, multicultural and multilingual nation and respect for regional languages was seen an important tool to preserve and promote this ideal.

He also expressed anguish that while Punjabi had been excluded from the list of official languages, English had been included in the list. “This is sure to hurt the sentiments of Punjabis in Jammu and Kashmir as well as everywhere else”, he added.

Earlier this week, Sukhbir had hinted that no alliance or government was important for Akali Dal in front of the welfare of the farmers, while declaring that the party would fulfill its responsibility towards the ‘annadaata’ come what may. He said that the SAD had taken a consistent stand from day one in favour of farmers and told farmer representatives that it would fulfill its responsibility as and when required.