Parkash Singh Badal, the former Punjab chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patriarch, died on Tuesday after being admitted to a private hospital in Mohali, according to medical officials and party sources. He was 95.
Badal, who was born in Muktsar on December 8, 1927, was elected village sarpanch at the age of 20. On a Congress ticket, he was elected to the Legislature for the first time in 1957. At the age of 43, he became Punjab's first chief minister, defeating Gurnam Singh.
After becoming president of the Akali Dal in 1995, Badal formed a pre-poll coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which won the assembly elections in 1997.
He was chief minister again from 2007 to 2017, when he was defeated by the Congress. Facing criticism from inside his own party, Badal turned over control of the party to his son Sukhbir Singh Badal in 2008.
He had returned the Padma Vibhushan award in 2020 after being a vocal critic of the Modi government's now-repealed three farm policies. In the 2022 Punjab elections, he was defeated by Aam Aadmi Party candidate Gurmeet Singh Khuddian from his home turf of Lambi by a margin of over 11,000 votes.
Parkash Singh Badal fought in 13 state assembly elections and won 11 of them. Between 1969 and 2017, he won ten consecutive surveys.
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