AMRITSAR
Senior Akali leader and Dakha MLA Manpreet Singh Ayali on Wednesday resigned from the Shiromani Akali Dal breakaway faction SAD (Punar Surjit) and hinted at joining the Akali Dal Waris Punjab De, a fledgling political outfit headed by jailed Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh.
His resignation is the second setback to former Akal Takht acting jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh-led party after senior leader and former Akali minister Surjit Singh Rakhra joined the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) last Sunday.
Ayali also quit the convenorship of an 8-member joint coordination panel formed to forge a Panthic alliance with Akali Dal (WPD) for the assembly elections due early next year. Last week, Amritpal’s party left the panel.
In a video posted on Facebook, Ayali said: “I resign from all the posts of SAD (PS) and convenorship of the joint coordination committee as the party leadership which lost the moral right to lead the Panth in accordance with the Akal Takht decree.”
The three-time legislator was part of the seven-member committee constituted by Akal Takht on December 2, 2024, to carry out a recruitment drive of the mainstream SAD led by Sukhbir Singh Badal. The panel was mandated to reorganise the party whose electoral graph has seen a significant slide since 2017. The SAD has fared poorly in the last two assembly polls, throwing the 105-year-old regional party into an unprecedented existential crisis.
Ayali, 51, had fallen out with the SAD after Akal Takht’s directive to recast the party. But the SAD had refused to accept the clergy’s intervention in its political affairs, leading to a split in the party. The breakaway leaders, including Ayali, floated a rival Akali Dal (PS) which pitched itself to be the real Akali Dal with Takht’s backing.
{{/usCountry}}Ayali, 51, had fallen out with the SAD after Akal Takht’s directive to recast the party. But the SAD had refused to accept the clergy’s intervention in its political affairs, leading to a split in the party. The breakaway leaders, including Ayali, floated a rival Akali Dal (PS) which pitched itself to be the real Akali Dal with Takht’s backing.
{{/usCountry}}However, Ayali’s ties with the new Akali party soured soon over its leadership and political ideology. “I had demanded that the party’s old guard should take the backstage as Akal Takht decree meant that this leadership had lost the moral right to lead the party. However, they did not pay attention to my point,” he said.
Targeting Giani Harpreet Singh, Ayali said the new Akali Dal didn’t get much response from the Sikh sangat. “We made efforts for an alliance with Akali Dal Waris Punjab De. But the SAD (PS) could not address the sentiments of sangat regarding the old leadership. This is the reason that alliance talk failed,” he said.
While Ayali ruled out joining the Congress, BJP, AAP and SAD, he is likely to embrace Amritpal’s outfit with which he has recently aligned attending its public meetings.
A three-time MLA, Ayali first won the Dakha assembly seat in 2012 on a SAD ticket. In 2014, he contested the Lok Sabha elections from Ludhiana but finished third as Congress leader Ravneet Singh Bittu won the parliamentary seat. He lost the Dakha seat in the 2017 polls to AAP leader HS Phoolka but returned to the assembly in 2019 after winning the byelection necessitated by Phoolka’s resignation, defeating Congress candidate Sandeep Sandhu. He retained the constituency in the 2022 elections and was among the three SAD legislators elected to the House.