Mohali, Apr 25: Former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal died on Tuesday evening at a private hospital in Mohali. He was 95.
The five-time chief minister was admitted to the hospital a few days ago after he complained of breathing difficulties.
Badal is survived by son and SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and daughter Parneet Kaur, who is married to former cabinet minister Adeish Partap Singh Kairon.
The SAD patriarch was the oldest candidate to contest the 2022 Punjab assembly elections. He, however, lost to AAP’s first-timer Gurmeet Singh Khudian.
Badal was the youngest sarpanch when he got elected from Badal village in 1952. He became the youngest CM of Punjab in 1970 and then the oldest CM in 2012. He also held the record of becoming the CM five times from 1970-71, 1977-80, 1997-2002, 2007-12 and 2012-17.
He was a Lok Sabha MP and served as the Union Agriculture Minister for a short span.
In his over 75-year political journey, Badal lost just two Assembly elections. First, to Harcharan Singh Brar from Gidderbaha in 1967 by just 57 votes and thereafter in 2022 to Gurmet Singh Khudian from Lambi in a constituency that he had nurtured.
He won the first Assembly election before the reorganisation of the state from Malout in 1957 on a Congress ticket. He won the Assembly election consecutively five times from Gidderbaha in 1969, 1972, 1977, 1980 and 1985. Thereafter, he switched to Lambi and won five times in a row in 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017.
Badal didn’t contest two Assembly elections in his political career once in 1962 and in 1992 when the SAD had boycotted it.
He was conferred with Padma Vibhushan in 2015, which he returned in 2020 to protest against the farm laws. He was also honoured with Path Rattan Faqr-e-Qaum (Jewel of the Panth Pride of the Community) in 2011.
People who knew him closely said that he preferred not to keep a cellphone by his side and knew at least one person from every family in his constituency.
