Kejriwal mocks Badal-Modi meet as alliance of 'thieves'
Synopsis
AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal responded sharply to a reported meeting between SAD president Sukhbir Badal and PM Modi at Parliament House, invoking a Hindi film lyric to mock what he called a reunion of the 'Chandaa Chor Party' and the 'Beadbi Party' — reigniting Punjab's most sensitive political fault lines.
Key Takeaways
Sukhbir Singh Badal , president of Shiromani Akali Dal , met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Parliament House on 7 August 2026 .
AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal responded on X with a Hindi film lyric, sarcastically framing the meeting as a romantic reunion between estranged allies.
Kejriwal labelled BJP the 'Chandaa Chor Party' and SAD the 'Beadbi Party', invoking the unresolved 2015 Guru Granth Sahib desecration cases .
SAD exited the NDA in September 2020 over the farm laws, ending over a decade of alliance governance in Punjab.
AAP governs Punjab after its 2022 landslide, making any SAD-BJP reunion a direct electoral threat to the party.
No formal alliance announcement has been made by SAD or BJP following the meeting.
A meeting between Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Parliament House on Friday, 7 August 2026 has drawn a sharp, sardonic response from AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal — one that signals Punjab's political chessboard is moving again.
Borrowing the opening line of a classic Hindi film song — 'Naa naa karte pyaar tumhi se kar baithe' ('Denying it all the while, they fell in love with you') — Kejriwal framed the meeting as an unlikely reunion between two parties he described with cutting labels: the 'Chandaa Chor Party' ('Electoral Bond Thief Party', a reference to BJP) and the 'Beadbi Party' ('Sacrilege Party', a tag long pinned on SAD over the 2015 Guru Granth Sahib desecration cases and the subsequent police firing incidents in Punjab).
The history behind the jibe
The SAD-BJP alliance governed Punjab in tandem for over a decade, with Sukhbir Badal serving as Deputy Chief Minister during the Parkash Singh Badal-led governments. That partnership fractured publicly in September 2020 when SAD walked out of the National Democratic Alliance in protest against the three central farm laws — a split that reshaped Punjab's political landscape heading into the 2022 assembly elections.
AAP swept those elections, reducing both SAD and BJP to marginal positions and forming government under Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. Since then, any signal of a possible SAD-BJP rapprochement carries direct electoral stakes for the party now in power in Chandigarh.
Why a Parliament meeting sets off alarm bells
Meetings between regional party presidents and the Prime Minister at Parliament House are rarely purely ceremonial. Across India's political history, such encounters have frequently preceded formal alliance announcements, seat-sharing talks, or at minimum a thaw in relations between parties that had drifted apart. With Punjab assembly elections on the horizon, the optics of Badal walking into Modi's office were always going to invite interpretation.
Kejriwal's post — equal parts wit and warning — is designed to do exactly that: plant a narrative in Punjab's public mind before either SAD or BJP can shape their own. By reviving the 'beadbi' frame around SAD, he is signalling to Sikh voters that he intends to contest any BJP-SAD reunion on the most sensitive possible terrain.
What the labels carry in Punjab
The term 'Beadbi Party' is not casual name-calling in Punjab. The 2015 sacrilege incidents — the theft of a 'bir' (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib and subsequent police firings at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura — remain among the most emotionally charged unresolved grievances in the state. SAD governed Punjab at the time. AAP has consistently used the issue as a political wedge, and Kejriwal's post ensures it stays attached to any image of SAD re-entering the NDA tent.
Whether the Badal-Modi meeting amounts to a formal alliance or a routine parliamentary courtesy, Kejriwal has already written the headline — and in Punjab, perception often moves faster than fact.
Point of View
AAP attempts to control the narrative in a state it governs. The 'beadbi' label is strategically potent — it ties SAD's potential return to the NDA to the 2015 sacrilege cases, an unhealed wound in Sikh public memory that AAP has long sought to own. If SAD and BJP do move toward a formal alliance for the next Punjab elections, AAP's ability to frame it as a union of disgraced parties could prove a significant mobilisation tool, particularly among rural Sikh voters who hold both parties responsible for that era's governance failures.
NationPress
7 Aug 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Kejriwal call BJP the 'Chandaa Chor Party'?
Kejriwal has used 'Chandaa Chor Party' — roughly 'Electoral Bond Thief Party' — as a label for the BJP, referencing AAP's criticism of the now-scrapped electoral bonds scheme, which the party argued allowed opaque corporate funding to the ruling party.
Why is SAD called the 'Beadbi Party' by AAP?
'Beadbi' means sacrilege in Punjabi. AAP and others have applied the tag to SAD because the 2015 incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib and subsequent police firings at Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura occurred when SAD was in power in Punjab.
When did SAD break away from the BJP-led NDA?
SAD formally exited the National Democratic Alliance in September 2020, citing its opposition to the three central farm laws introduced by the Modi government.
What was the result of the 2022 Punjab assembly elections?
AAP won a landslide majority in the February 2022 Punjab assembly elections, with Bhagwant Mann becoming Chief Minister. Both SAD and BJP were reduced to single-digit seat tallies.
Does the Badal-Modi meeting confirm a SAD-BJP alliance?
No formal alliance has been announced. Meetings between regional leaders and the Prime Minister at Parliament House are common and do not automatically indicate an electoral pact, though they frequently precede alliance discussions.
