Jathedar Tota Singh

Jathedar Tota Singh was born on 2 March 1941 at Didar Singh Wala in Moga district (Wikipedia). The press styles him Jathedar; none of the sources opened say he held the office of Jathedar of a Takht. He rose through Akali Dal work: sarpanch of his village in the 1960s, Akali Dal district president at Ferozepur in 1969, and for 17 years at Faridkot after it was carved out. In 1978 he was nominated to the party's central working committee, and in 1979 he was elected to the SGPC, where he was senior vice-president and head of its education committee for 17 years. He was still an SGPC member when he died (The Tribune).

In 1985 he was chairman of the Punjab Mandi Board under Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala. The Tribune says he helped bring together the Akali factions led by Barnala, Simranjit Singh Mann and Parkash Singh Badal, and in 1992 helped persuade Badal to boycott the Assembly elections. Mann left the party that year and Badal was elected president unopposed.

In office

• 1997: first elected from Moga, and made education minister in the Badal government.
• 2002: re-elected from Moga. He lost the seat in 2007.
• 2012: won Dharamkot and became agriculture minister.
• He lost Dharamkot in 2017 (Wikipedia).

On 5 May 2012, weeks after becoming a minister, he resigned after a special court in Mohali sentenced him to a year in jail for misusing an official vehicle during his earlier term as minister. The High Court stayed the conviction and he was brought back into the cabinet with the same portfolio (The Tribune). Wikipedia says he was acquitted in other cases, on disproportionate assets and on the misuse of an official telephone.

He was senior vice-president and a core committee member of the Shiromani Akali Dal. He died on 21 May 2022, aged 81, after a prolonged illness. Sukhbir Singh Badal called him a father figure; Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann also paid tribute (ThePrint, The Tribune).

What he is remembered for. He is remembered as a long-serving party man of the Badal era whose career ran through the SGPC, the cabinet and the 1992 consolidation of the party under Badal. The sources opened do not connect him to the Bargari beadbi or the Behbal Kalan firing, and this page makes no claim about them.