Akali Dal’s focus is to bring development back on track in Punjab: Harsimrat Kaur Badal
The Hindu
Former Union Minister is confident her party will win after parting ways with BJP.
As the century-old Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) campaigns intensely across Punjab ahead of the Assembly election, due in early 2022, with the aim of usurping the Congress and forming the next government in the border State, former Union Cabinet Minister and senior SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal, in an exclusive interview, asserts that the phenomenal response to Akali Dal rallies across the State indicates that the party is all set to form the next government in Punjab.
For the SAD, the issue has remained the same in every election, which is peace and prosperity, communal harmony, development of Punjab and the welfare of every segment. That is what we had delivered in the 10 years of our governance. In the last five years, Punjab has gone down on every parameter — be it education, health, jobs, social welfare sector or overall development.

In , the grape capital of India and host of the Simhastha Kumbh Mela every 12 years, environmental concerns over a plan to cut 1,800 trees for the proposed Sadhugram project in the historic Tapovan area have sharpened political fault lines ahead of local body elections. The issue has pitted both Sena factions against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra. While Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Minister and Shiv Sena chief, and Uddhav Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena (UBT), remain political rivals, their parties have found rare common ground in Tapovan, where authorities propose clearing trees across 34 acres to build Sadhugram and a MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) hub, as part of a ₹300-crore infrastructure push linked to the pilgrimage.












