Prakash Singh Badal was born in 1927 at Abul Khurana near Malout and took his name from Badal village, the family's seat. He was first elected in 1957, became Chief Minister of Punjab five times between 1970 and 2017, and was president of the Shiromani Akali Dal from the mid 1990s until 2008.
His governments oversaw the alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party that gave the Akali Dal an urban Hindu partner and made majorities possible, the expansion of free power and welfare provision, and the period of stability after 1997.
They also presided over the events of 2015 at Bargari and Behbal Kalan, which broke the party's standing in rural Punjab, and over a fiscal position that deteriorated steadily.
The party's vote collapsed in 2017, 2022 and 2024. He returned the Padma Vibhushan in 2020 over the farm laws.
He died in 2023 at ninety-five, having been in electoral politics for sixty-six years.
A single career spans the Punjabi Suba movement, the Emergency, 1984, the militancy, the settlement and the collapse of the party that ran Sikh politics for a century.
He was chief minister five times across five decades, first in 1970 and last from 2007 to 2017, and he was in electoral politics from 1957 until his death, which is among the longest careers any Indian politician has had.
His party's alliance with the BJP, held for over two decades, was the structure of Punjab politics until it broke over the farm laws in 2020.
He returned his Padma Vibhushan in 2020 in protest at those laws. He died in 2023 and the party he led has not recovered its position since.