NEWS ANALYSIS
BY RAMAN SWAMY

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NEW DELHI: The second anniversary of the BJP-Akali coalition
government in Punjab ought to have been a time for celebrations.
Instead, the mood will be one of acrimony and recriminations on
Febraury 12, with the BJP wringing its hands in despair at the
Badal versus Tohra ego clash which is threatening to wreak unity
within the Shiromani Akali Dal.

In what has all the elements of a fight to the finish,
regardless of consequences, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal
is locked in one-upmanship with Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak
Committee (SGPC) President Gurcharan Singh Tohra. And the Akali
Dal is split right down the middle, much to the glee of the
Opposition Congress party.

Two years ago when the Akali Dal-BJP coalition led by Parkash
Singh Badal rode to power in Punjab after routing the Congress,
a senior Congress leader had predicted that the Akalis would not
remain together even for a year.

That prediction may have been highly exaggerated. But in the
past six months or so, Akali unity is beginning to fall apart.
Mainly due to the burning personal ambitions of Badal and Tohra.

The unwritten understanding between the two not to violate each
other`s space and to consult each other on running their
respective affairs, was evidently being breached.

Badal has long been suspected of cherishing hopes of emerging as
an historic Sikh leader and has been known to nuture his
constituency in both party and religious domains.

Tohra, on the other hand, has always resented being deprived of
real political and administrative power. Despite ruling the
roost for more than two decades as the Shriromani Gurudwara
Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), the apex body managing Sikh
shrines, he has been angling for either chief ministership or at
least a major portfolio at the Centre.

Since becoming Chief Minister, Badal the politician has been
seeking to gain credibility among the Sikh clergy, thereby
encroaching into Tohra's home ground.

Things came to a head when Badal evolved a strategy to assume an
active religious role by setting up the Anandpur Sahib
Foundation to act as a nodal agency for holding the tercentenary
celebration of the birth of the Khalsa Panth.

This effectively relegated Tohra and the SGPC to the background.
Tohra retaliated by taking up issues like injustice to the Sikhs
living in Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh, suicide
by farmers, financial crisis and a non-responsive Akali
administration.

Tohra`s writ began to run in some disticts like Patiala, Ropar
and Fatehgarh Sahib where he managed to get his men appointed in
the police and administration.

He started running the administration through the backdoor and
even began dropping hints that he could get many things done if
he became the chief minister. This triggered off rumours that
Tohra would soon replace Badal, whose health was said to be
failing.

The issue came to the surface in November last year soon after
the Akali Dal lost the Adampur assembly byelection to the
Congress. Tohra thought it an opportune time to cut Badal to
size. In an interview to an agency Tohra suggested that Badal
should appoint an acting chief of the party to look after the
party affairs full time.

To buttress his arguments, Tohra opined that he, being busy with
other manifold activities, had delegated many of his powers and
functions to the Acting SGPC President Sukhdev Singh Bhaur.
Similarly, Badal should delegate his party responsibilities to
one of his close lieutenants, such as Gurdev Singh Badal, a
cabinet minister.

This suggestion was taken as an attempt by Tohra to create a
divide in the Badal camp and in a counter-attack, Badal
supporters condemned Tohra for making such a demand in public.

The battle-lines were drawn. In a bid to mount pressure on
Badal, five ministers owing allegiance to Tohra submitted their
resignations, thinking that the chief minister would be forced
to make major concessions in return for withdrawal of the
resignation.

But instead, Badal acted promptly and forwarded their
resignations to the Governor for acceptance the very next day.
He also launched a vigorous campaign to mobilise support from
SGPC members, party functionaries, MPs and MLAs and district
jathedars to marginalise Tohra. To clip Tohra`s wings, Badal
targetted the SGPC chief's stronghold districts and transferred
all his appointees in the police and civil administration out of
Patiala, Ropar and Fatehgarh Sahib.

In a decisive follow-up action, he got the Disciplinary Action
Committee of the Akali Dal, headed by senior leader Jagdev Singh
Talwandi and packed with Badal loyalists, to issue a show cause
notice to Tohra as to why action should not be taken against him
for breach of party discipline.

This put Tohra on the defensive. But he managed to persuade Akal
Takht Jathedar, Bhai Ranjit Singh, to come to his rescue by
issuing a 'hukumnama` (edict) directing both Tohra and Badal to
refrain from the infighting till April 13 when the tercentenary
celebrations of the Khalsa panth would begin.

But the "hukumnama" became controversial when 131 out of the 185
SGPC members questioned the edict with a charge that Bhai Ranjit
Singh had lowered the sanctity of the "hukumnamas" by too
frequently resorting to this instrument, more than a dozen in
the past year.

But the Jathedar has refused to withdraw the "hukumnama" and
said that the SGPC members could not go against the Akal Takht
as they have pledged to dedicate themselves to the highest
temporal seat.

To hit at Badal indirectly, the Jathedar has summoned Badal`s
close aide Barjinder Singh Hamdard, Rajya Sabha MP and editor of
"Ajit", a Punjabi daily, for writing anti-panth stories and for
publishing blasphemous extracts from a banned book, Vanity
Incarnate, in his daily.

Anxious to regain the initiative, Badal organised a joint
meeting of SGPC members, party functionaries, MPs, MLAs and
district jathedars and, in the presence of Tohra, the meeting
"fully authorised" Badal to chalk out the programme for the
tercentenary celebrations and to coordinate between the
government, the Akali Dal  and the SGPC for the purpose.

To undermine Tohra further, Badal scrapped the Sikh Gurdwara
Judicial Commission of the SGPC to oust Tohra loyalists from the
semi-judicial panel formed to resolve gurdwara disputes and
appointed his own men on this Commission.

Before putting Tohra on the firing line, the Akali Dal suspended
a close aide of Tohra and Acting President, SGPC, Sukhdev Singh
Bhaur for his anti-party activities. Bhaur had blamed Badal for
instigating SGPC members to challenge the December 31
'hukumnama`.

The Tohra camp now apprehends that after expelling Tohra from
the Akali Dal and the SGPC, the Badal camp plans to remove the
Akal Takht Jathedar. The Badal camp is likely to convene a
special general house of the SGPC to move a "no confidence
motion" against Tohra to expel him from the SGPC and to
supersede the December 31 hukumnama.

In a counter-offensive, aimed at staging a separate tercentenary
celebrations, the Akal Takht has summoned a meeting of Sikh
sants and religious organisations to chalk out a programme to
hold the celebrations beginning from April 13.

The upshot is that there will now be three different
tercentenary celebrations, including the one by the Congress.
But in the process the shrewd Tohra has succeeded in turning the
feud between him and Badal into a tussle between the Akal Takht
and the Badal camp.

The Akali Dal, clearly, is hurtling towards a raucous round of
expulsions and splits. In all this, coalition partner BJP is
watching helplessly from the sidelines on the plea that it does
not want to interfere in the "internal affairs" of the Akali
Dal.

But as a consequence, the BJP is fast losing whatever ground it
had among urban Hindus. In contrast, the Congress, hoping to
bounce back to power, is consolidating its base in urban and
rural areas. END.
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