 over the farm Bills issue.){kind=link}
The Shiromani Akali Dal has quit the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the farm Bills issue, SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal announced Saturday night.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is now short of three of its oldest members.
With the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) walking out of the front, the notion that the Narendra Modi-led BJP has failed miserably to accommodate regional aspirations has gained further traction. This, despite the fact that its state allies, by the way of their unapologetic support to the prime minister’s overtly majoritarian politics, have played a crucial role in the party’s resurgence in the last few years.
The SAD-BJP’s proverbial divorce was perhaps waiting to happen. Eventually, Sukhbir Badal made the announcement after holding a core committee meeting of the party.Â
According to a party statement issued here, he said the decision to quit the NDA was taken because of the Centre’s stubborn refusal to give statutory legislative guarantees to protect assured marketing of farmers crops on MSP and its continued insensitivity to Punjabi and Sikh issues like excluding Punjabi language as official language in Jammu and Kashmir.
The SAD becomes the third major NDA ally to pull out of the grouping after the Shiv Sena and the TDP.
Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who recently resigned from the Union Cabinet, in protest against the farm bills was the only SAD MP in Modi’s government.
Badal said the SAD will continue to stand by its core principles of peace, communal harmony and guard the interest of Punjab and Punjabi in general, and Sikhs and farmers in particular.
He said the decision has been taken in consultation with the people of Punjab, especially party workers and farmers.
Badal said the Bills on agricultural marketing brought by the BJP-led government are lethal and disastrous for the already beleaguered farmers.
He said the SAD was the oldest ally of the BJP, but the government did not listen to it in honouring the sentiments of farmers.