Vajpayee Punjab connection! By Ajay Bhardwaj As the sun sets on the Atal Behari Vajpayee era, in Punjab, five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and Congress cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu must be twirling their fingers quietly in a private corner. To both of them, perhaps, he meant far too much than the eyes can meet. Not to discount the discomfort that cine star Vinod Khanna would be feeling in his grave. Vajpayee's stamp on Punjab would always remain indelible in far too many ways. It was Vajpayee's personal call to the forlorn Sidhu in 2004 that made him take a plunge into politics. But for Vajpayee, Sidhu would have never found space on the state's political firmament. The call was necessitated by the fact that the BJP was unable to find someone for Amritsar seat, where Congress had the stronghold in six-time MP, R L Bhatia for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Vajpayee knew that charisma pays. So, for Amritsar, over-ruling all the possible BJP candidates, Vajpayee had a pick on Sidhu. A devout Sikh, who had nothing to do with the BJP, Sidhu just fell to the charm of Vajpayee. And the rest is history, of course, for Sidhu. In 1996 facing a similar crisis for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, where the BJP had no strong candidate to face four-time Congress MP Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, Vajpayee played his card to upturn the Congress applecart decisively through Vinod Khanna. For all such decisions, the only person he leaned on in Punjab was five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. And it takes us to an altogether different chapter of Hindu-Sikh amity in Punjab demonstrated so firmly and doggedly by Parkash Singh Badal through the glasses of Vajpayee. In Punjab, a state so vehemently divided on communal and lingual lines, it was Badal's unstinting vision and bond with Vajpayee, in particular, that saw the alliance of the Akali Dal-BJP see through all the possible tumultuous times in the state. On many occasions, Badal has received brickbats from the diehard radicals among the Sikhs for cosying up with the BJP, but it was the Vajpayee-Badal duo which overlooked the conflicting strains and ensured an unbelievable Akali Dal-BJP bond in the state which has lasted almost 45 years, regardless of the blood-soaked years of militancy. Not to forget, the senior BJP leader Balramji Dass Tandon, Governor of Chattisgarh, who left for heavenly abode last week, was always pivotal in building the bond since 1969. With Vajpayee and Tandon leaving the stage, and Badal not so active in politics what course would the Akali Dal-BJP bond take is anybody's guess.