Sukhbir Badal elected SAD president

Sukhbir Singh Badal's election as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president today has taken the 45-year-old leader closer to being anointed as the Punjab chief minister, replacing his aging father Parkash Singh Badal.

Sukhbir, who is a Lok Sabha member, was unanimously elected as SAD president in Amritsar today, a good one year after the SAD-BJP combine trounced the Congress in the Assembly elections, in which the junior Badal had won many an admirer for his managerial skills and leadership qualities.

Although the 81-year-old Parkash Singh Badal, who has been chief minister four times, has not sounded his plans to retire in spite of his reported failing health, SAD sources said, "Sukhbir's ascendancy remains a formality and a matter of time."

The US-educated Sukhbir Badal is seen as a modern-day politician with little affinity for the jathedars (Sikh clergymen) and the gurdwara-centric politics of the SAD.

Sources said his handling of the last year's election campaign in Punjab had silenced his critics within the party and also raised his clout.

This was evident from the way former union minister in the NDA regime S S Dhindsa, a known critic of Sukhbir's rise in the party on the sheer strength of his father, had seconded Sukhbir's nomination as president of the party today.

Sukhbir had entered politics with getting elected as member of the Lok Sabha in 1996. He became a minister of state in the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA government and also became a Rajya Sabha member.