Decision taken at SAD core committee meeting
AMN / CHANDIGARH
In major political development, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday night broke alliance with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the issue of contentious farm legislations against which farmers were protesting across India.
The party core committee took the decision after a four-hour meeting.
SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal announced partying ways with the BJP after the meeting.
He said the core committee at its emergency meeting here tonight decided unanimously to pull out of the BJP-led NDA 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.
Addressing media, Sukhbir Badal said SAD will continue stand by its core principles of peace, communal harmony and guard the interest of Punjab, Punjabi in general and Sikhs and farmers in particular.
Badal said the Bills on agricultural marketing brought by the BJP 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 on honouring the sentiments of farmers