Sukhbir Badal courts Gen Z at Khalsa College as SAD launches ‘Vibe Punjab Di’

Dressed in a white kurta-pajama, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal spent Thursday evening trying to win over the most demanding audience in Punjab politics: the young. At Khalsa College in Patiala, he launched the party's youth outreach programme, ‘Vibe Punjab Di’, in front of students aged 18 to 25, with the 2027 Assembly elections firmly in his sights.

Around 4,000 question chits were dropped into a box at the venue, and about ten were picked out by draw for the SAD chief to answer on stage. He had arrived in Patiala after releasing a door-to-door campaign pamphlet in Chandigarh earlier in the day, and the evening swung between hard politics and lighter, personal questions.

A town hall with the 18-to-25 crowd

The mood was informal from the start. Asked about his favourite song, Badal said he had no time left to listen to music — moments before a Diljit Dosanjh track, ‘Vibe Teri Meri Mildi Aa’, played in the background and he broke into a smile and posed for a selfie with the students.

Food blogger Navi Anand drew the most cheerful exchange of the evening. Badal told the audience he was a vegetarian whose comfort foods included pizza and pasta — along with maa di dal and Diet Coke. ‘I am also trying to catch up with my young daughters. I am the cool parent, while my wife is very strict with the children,’ he laughed.

He also turned reflective, recalling how his father Parkash Singh Badal had been so consumed by public life that he once walked into Badal’s school and asked the principal for him by his nickname, ‘Lali’.

Debt, farming tech and a ‘development man’

On policy, Badal faced pointed questions. Student Harneet Kaur asked how Punjab’s debt — estimated at around Rs 4.5 lakh crore — could ever be cleared. He drew a distinction between ‘good’ debt used for development and income generation and ‘bad’ debt used for day-to-day expenses, and claimed the state’s debt-to-GDP ratio had fallen from 46 per cent in 2007 to 32 per cent in 2017 during SAD rule before climbing to 49 per cent since.

On agriculture, Badal said Punjab needed to break free of the wheat-paddy cycle and focus on farming and industry together. He described experimenting with soilless farming in grow bags in his village of Badal, where strawberries, blueberries, cherry tomatoes and red and yellow capsicums are being grown under computer-controlled conditions. He promised an 80 per cent subsidy for farmers adopting such technology if the SAD returned to power.

Calling himself a ‘development man’, Badal urged the youth to pick a chief minister who could take Punjab forward. He said he respected former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh as an elder but rarely saw him interact with people, and charged that the current chief minister, Bhagwant Mann, had pushed Punjab backwards.

He also made a direct pitch on jobs: if the SAD returned to power, government jobs would go only to Punjabis, and industries would have to give 75 per cent of their jobs to Punjabis.

Campaign calendar: door-to-door, yatra and a December rally

The SAD announced a packed election programme the same day. A door-to-door campaign across all Assembly constituencies begins on October 6, kicked off by Badal himself from Attari, to gather suggestions for the party’s election manifesto. A statewide bus yatra led by Badal follows on November 10 from Talwandi Sabo.

Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal will launch the second phase of the party’s women’s anti-drug movement from Sri Muktsar Sahib on October 5, taking the slogan ‘Maawan–Dheeyan di Lalkaar, Band Karo Nasha da Vyapar’ across the state. A public rally is planned for December 8 at Killi Chahlan village in Moga on the birthday of Parkash Singh Badal.

Party leader Daljit Singh Cheema said the manifesto committee had already met the party’s scheduled caste and backward caste wings and would now meet farmers, traders, youth and government employees, with the campaign wrapping up by October 25. He also announced a ten-member committee of lawyers to monitor false, baseless and defamatory content about the party and its leaders in the media and on social media.