The death of 95-year-old Parkash Singh Badal, a five-time former Chief Minister of Punjab and Akali Dal patriarch, has indeed left a void in politics. An active politician, behas lend his hand in introducing several welfare schemes in Punjab. The veteran leader climbed his way up the political ladder, serving as a village sarpanch, before he contested assembly elections for the first time in 1957, when he was 30 years old, as a Congressman.Prakash Singh Badal was the youngest Chief Minister to ever hold office in the state of Punjab. He was 43. In a career spanning over seven decades, he lost only two elections – one in 1967, and the latest in the 2022 Punjab assembly election. The loss was particularly acute as he lost his stronghold Lambi, which he fronted for several decades.He courted arrest during Operation Bluestar in June 1984 when the Army had entered the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar to flush out militants. His party broke off ties with the BJP over the farmers’ agitation against the Centre new agricultural laws in 2020. Parkash Singh Badal returned his Padma Vibhushan award – the second highest civilian honour of the country that he received from the government in 2015 – in protest against the treatment of the protesting farmers by the Central government.
