New Punjab Party's Policy-first Launch Sets A Bar Every Party Should Now Meet: Kbs Sidhu
Sep26,2026
| Jagrati Lahar Bureau | Chandigarh
The Punjab Sanjhiwalta Dal has made written, costed policy the entry
ticket to Punjab politics, and the established parties contesting the 2027 Assembly elections should now
publish programmes of the same kind before they name their chief-ministerial faces. KBS Sidhu, former
Special Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab, and Convener of the Shiromani Punjab Forum, said this
while welcoming the party launched in Chandigarh on 23 September by Amitoj Singh Mann, Advocate
Navkiran Singh and five colleagues.
KBS Sidhu said the Dal had done three things Punjab's politics has long avoided. It has declined to project
a chief-ministerial face and relies on collective leadership. It has put figures on paper, including ₹12,500
crore of the ₹26,300 crore subsidy bill for assured MSP on 23 water-saving crops and additional funds for
district hospitals. And it has committed every candidate, by affidavit, to its programme and to the Election
Commission's ₹40 lakh spending ceiling.
"A roadmap that cannot be shown before the appointment is not a roadmap. It is a job application," KBS
Sidhu said. "The Sanjhiwalta Dal has shown its roadmap first. Every other party should now be asked to do
the same."
He noted that the Dal's first policy instalment and the Chali Nukte, the forty-point Common Minimum
Programme he placed in the public domain on 6 September, reach common ground by different roads. On
free farm power, the Dal would keep one tubewell connection free per farmer, while the Chali Nukte link
free power to PM-Kisan eligibility; both would target the subsidy to need. On sand, the Dal would make it
free and recover revenue through a levy at building-plan approval; mining earned the State ₹288.52 crore
in 2023-24, against the ₹20,000 crore once promised. The two also overlap on police accountability,
devolution to panchayats, and SGPC elections, which have not been held since September 2011. Any party
may adopt the Chali Nukte without permission or attribution.
KBS Sidhu offered five suggestions to the Dal ahead of its second instalment, promised within fifteen days:
1. Fund from the many: raise money in small sums from a wide base and publish every donation
online as it arrives, with clear guidance on the foreign-contribution law, which bars political parties
from taking money from foreign citizens, including OCI cardholders.
2. Name the route: state, for each promise, whether it will be delivered by the State, by the Union, or
by local bodies.
3. Reconcile the arithmetic: explain whether the roughly ₹6,100 crore for education, health and rural
employment comes out of the ₹13,800 crore subsidy residue or is additional.
4. Keep domicile within the Constitution: restrictions on land purchase of the Himachal kind rest on
firmer ground than residence conditions for State jobs, which the Constitution leaves to Parliament.
5. Take up the unfinished: adopt the case of the 11,231 tenant cultivators entitled to ownership under
a law passed and signed but still not implemented.
KBS Sidhu recalled that reform parties have faltered in Punjab before. The People's Party of Punjab won
no seat in 2012, and the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha, born of the farmers' victory at Delhi's borders, won none
in 2022. He said the Dal's decision to agree on policy before sharing seats, and its candour about its
organisational limits, give it a sounder start than its predecessors had.
"Punjab's federal claims on Chandigarh, the river waters, Panjab University and the SGPC are best pressed
within the Union of India, through the Constitution and on the strength of a consensus built at home
first," KBS Sidhu said. "I hope the 2027 campaign gives Punjabis programmes that speak to their felt
needs, and I wish the Dal's founders well."
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