Balwant Singh, Akali Dal Finance Minister

Balwant Singh was a senior Akali Dal leader and a Finance Minister of Punjab who sat on the Akali side of most of the talks with the Centre between 1981 and 1985. Khushwant Singh's History of the Sikhs says in a footnote that he was born in 1929 at Saidpur in Kapurthala, a Kambhoj by community, with an MA in economics and an LLB, that he began in the Congress, lost his first election and was elected in 1962, and that he later joined the Akali Dal. The same footnote calls him "a shrewd but unreliable politician", which is the historian's own judgement.

Key moments

• 1970: Gurmit Singh writes that when Sant Fateh Singh moved to bring down Chief Minister Gurnam Singh's ministry, Balwant Singh, its Finance Minister, refused to present the Appropriation Bill. Gurnam Singh tried to introduce it himself, the Akali legislators who backed the Sant voted it down with the Jana Sangh, and Gurnam Singh resigned.
• 16 October 1981: he was in the Akali team, with Longowal, Tohra, Badal and Barnala, that met Indira Gandhi. Khushwant Singh counts him among the Akali representatives who stayed much the same through the twenty-six meetings with the Centre between 1981 and 2 February 1984.
• 3 October 1982: Gurmit Singh records that he, then an ex-Finance Minister, courted arrest with a batch of 4,000 volunteers.
• 23 January 1983: the Akali Dal named him with Surjit Singh Barnala and Ravi Inder Singh as its negotiators in the tripartite talks held in Delhi the next day.
• July 1985: Khushwant Singh writes that when Sant Longowal sounded senior Akali leaders on reopening talks with Rajiv Gandhi, Tohra and Badal counselled caution, Barnala and Balwant advised him to go ahead, and the Sant chose to rely on the counsels of Barnala and Balwant Singh. He met the Prime Minister on 23 July 1985. Khushwant Singh says Balwant Singh played a significant role in signing the Rajiv-Longowal Accord.
• 1985 to 1987: he was Finance Minister in Surjit Singh Barnala's government, and Khushwant Singh calls him Barnala's deputy. After Amnesty International began looking into the Jodhpur detainees' cases in October 1986, Gurmit Singh reports, Barnala and he wrote to it assuring it that the Punjab Government "has always been stressing the need for an early release of Jodhpur detainees".
• 10 July 1990: he was assassinated in Chandigarh. Khushwant Singh names him as one victim of the ire of what he calls "militant elements", and says he was trying to persuade the Prime Minister to restore the suspended Punjab Assembly. Wikipedia, citing The New York Times of 11 July 1990, says he was killed in July 1990.

He is remembered as one of the Akali Dal's chief negotiators in the years of the Dharam Yudh and as the Finance Minister of the Barnala government.