Bibi Satwant Kaur

Bibi Satwant Kaur is one of the Sikh leaders named to the committee of seven that Sri Akal Takht Sahib created on 2 December 2024, when it pronounced religious punishment on Sukhbir Singh Badal. The committee was told to run a membership drive for the Akali Dal and hold elections for its president and other office-bearers within six months.

ThePrint's report of its first meeting, held at Patiala on 4 February 2025, listed the members as Harjinder Singh Dhami, Kirpal Singh Badungar, Iqbal Singh Jhundan, Gurpartap Singh Wadala, Manpreet Singh Ayali, Santa Singh Umaidpur and Satwant Kaur. The reports used here give no further biography, so her constituency and earlier offices are not stated.

Key moments

• 4 February 2025: the committee met for the first time, at Patiala.
• March 2025: Dhami and Badungar resigned from the committee, leaving five members. The Shiromani Akali Dal called the committee's membership drive "fake", saying it was being run for a party that did not exist, and ran its own drive instead.
• 11 August 2025: at a meeting in Amritsar the rebel faction chose Giani Harpreet Singh as its president. Manpreet Singh Ayali then announced a Panthic council under Bibi Satwant Kaur, one of the five who had run the recruitment, saying it would guide the Akali Dal and foster unity among Sikh bodies. Ayali said the five-member committee had worked transparently and in line with the orders of the Akal Takht.

What she is known for: she is one of the five who carried on the membership drive the Akal Takht ordered, and the woman named to head the faction's Panthic council. The dispute over whether that committee and its drive had authority is between that faction and the Shiromani Akali Dal, whose leadership rejected it. Her own statements are not reported in the sources used here.