Cites differences with BJP on CAA, NRC; offered less seats: Sources
Citing differences on Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizen (NRC), BJP’s old ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Badal, on Monday announced that the party will not contest Delhi Assembly polls. However, well placed sources in the BJP said the SAD wanted to contest elections on six seats whereas they were offered three seats.
The SAD was also not very keen to contest on BJP’s ‘lotus symbol’ as it wanted to contest on its own party symbol of “weighing scale”. BJP leaders tried to convince SAD leadership to let its candidate contest on its symbol as they have won while going with this symbol during past elections.
SAD president was not very keen to forego his party’s identity and decided not to field its candidates on the seats being offered by the BJP.
Importantly, the SAD will keep its alliance with the BJP intact and remain in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Incidentally, SAD leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the sitting MLA from Rajouri Garden Assembly constituency who had won on BJP symbol, said, “the SAD and the BJP have an old relationship but SAD’s stand has been quite clear on CAA and NRC. The SAD president has welcomed the CAA which was supposed to include people from all religions but we never demanded that any one religion should be excluded from the list.”
“BJP leadership wanted us to reconsider this stand, so, we decided to not fight these polls instead of changing our stand,” Sirsa added.
Sirsa who was accompanied by Harmeet Singh Kalka, president, Delhi unit of the SAD said that they have opted out as they refused to change their stand on including Muslims in the CAA. “Our party’s stand was questioned by the alliance partner - BJP,” Sirsa said.
“We were questioned on SAD leadership’s stand on CAA and told in meetings that this was not the BJP stand. Our stand is clear that country cannot be divided on the basis of religion, the party was asked to reconsider the stand on including our Muslim brothers in the CAA. The Akali Dal does not favour the NRC also,” Sirsa said.
Pertinently, Delhi has over 10 lakh sikh voters and SAD contested elections in Delhi from the four Sikh dominated Assembly seats which are - Hari Nagar, Rajouri Garden, Tilak Nagar and Kalkaji.
Notably, SAD fought Assembly elections in 2015 while in 2017 Sirsa fought by-election from the Rajouri Garden seat which he lost to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Jarnail Singh.
