The year 2013 marked the emergence of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal as the most popular Sikh leader in the country besides the arrival of the SAD at the national scene with the party winning three of the four assembly seats it contested in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha elections.The SAD was successful in projecting young and dynamic Sukhbir Singh Badal as a brand ambassador of the Sikh community which paid rich pidends with the party sweeping elections to the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC).
The SAD President’s mass appeal as well as his ability to micro manage elections was also at the fore with SAD backed candidates sweeping elections to the panchayat, panchayat samiti and zila parishad elections this year.
Sukhbir Singh Badal also turned conventional politics on its head by inducting Moga Congress legislator Joginderpal Jain into the SAD by making him resign his seat. The party fielded Jain as its candidate in the resultant bypoll which the party won with a handsome margin. This unsettled the Punjab Congress and led to a number of events including the ouster of Capt Amarinder Singh as the Pradesh Congress President and desertion of a number of senior leaders from the Congress including former minister Avtar Singh Brar.The New Year in January 2013 witnessed Sukhbir Singh Badal taking up the challenge of wresting control of the DSGMC elections from the Sarna group led by Paramjit Singh Sarna of the SAD (Delhi). The SAD swept the elections winning 37 of the 46 constituencies. The scale of the party victory could be judged from the fact that DSGMC president Paramjit Singh Sarna lost by the highest margin against Manjinder Singh Sirsa of the SAD. The party's victory in the DSGMC polls was followed by the victory in the Moga by-poll in March. Akali Dal candidate Joginder Pal Jain defeated his Congress rival Vijay Kumar Sathi by 18,845 votes. The party consolidated this victory by registering all round wins in the Zila Parishad, Panchayat Samiti and Panchayat elections proving that its strong grass root base had been strengthened even further. The SAD-BJP combine bagged 297 out of the 329 Zila Parishad seats. It similarly romped home in 2122 out of the 2731 panchayat samiti seats.
The SAD-BJP ‘chintan shivir’ held in Goa in April to contemplate the problems being faced by the people of Punjab as well as to find ways to address them was also the brain child of the SAD President. The joint session besides helping to foster better ties between the coalition partners also afforded an opportunity to introspect and work out a joint political strategy also by fine tuning policies suited to the aspirations of the people of the State.
This year was also important for Sukhbir Singh Badal as once again he was elected President of Shiromani Akali Dal in September. The party re-elected the 51-year-old Sukhbir Singh Badal as its president through a voice-vote during a delegate session held in the Teja Singh Samundari Hall, within the Golden Temple complex, Amritsar. Though it is his second term, he is the 21st Akali leader to hold office as chief of the oldest regional political party of the country. Sukhbir was first elected as president of the SAD in 2008.Sukhbir Singh Badal has proved himself as an election strategist time and again by putting the right person at the right place at the right time. He has shown his capabilities and enhanced his political position. The yearend witnessed the SAD extending its base outside the State. Besides the victories in Delhi, the party also has an MLA in Haryana and is set to expand the party into other States also including Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.