A test for the Badals

The 2022 Assembly election in Punjab will put a party in government and another in the opposition

There is hardly any doubt that the upcoming election (on February 20) in Punjab is going to make or break the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), and, with it, the fortunes of the Badal family, especially former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal. The farmers’ agitation cost the party its position at the high table: It had to quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and bid adieu to its oldest alliance partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Today, members of a party that has never reached double digits in the Assembly (in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, despite a Modi wave in