Professor Kirpal Singh Badungar

Professor Kirpal Singh Badungar is a veteran Akali leader and twice a president of the SGPC. Wikipedia gives his birth as 14 January 1942 at Badungar village in Patiala district, says he took a gyani course at Punjabi University and a postgraduate degree in English literature, taught in a school and then joined the Shiromani Akali Dal, of which he was secretary from 1996 to 2001. He is a living person, and descriptions of his politics are attributed to those who made them.

Key moments

• 27 November 2001 to 27 July 2003: first term as SGPC president, taking over from Jagdev Singh Talwandi and followed by Gurcharan Singh Tohra.
• 5 November 2016: elected SGPC president for a second time, succeeding Avtar Singh Makkar a year after the Bargari beadbi and the Sarbat Khalsa.
• 29 November 2017: the SGPC General House elected Gobind Singh Longowal in his place, by 154 votes to 15 for Amrik Singh Shahpur; the Tribune gave no reason for the change.
• 2 December 2024: he was one of the seven members of the committee that the Akal Takht formed, with Harjinder Singh Dhami as chair, to run the Akali Dal's membership drive and the election of its president and office-bearers after declaring the party's leadership unfit.
• 17 to 18 February 2025: Dhami resigned from the committee and as SGPC president. On 18 February Badungar quit too, ahead of its third meeting, saying the committee had little relevance without its chair and had met twice without a tangible outcome. The Tribune described him as a known loyalist of the Badal family.

Remembered for: two terms at the head of the SGPC, one of them in the aftermath of the 2015 Bargari events, and for leaving the Akal Takht's committee after only two meetings.