His bullet-proof Montero meanders through traffic bottlenecks and bumpy pathways at a high speed. But the scary ride is not something bothering Sukhbir Badal. The e-mail and messaging mode of his BlackBerry handset is not working properly. It’s been a busy morning in meetings with party workers at his Chandigarh residence, and Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal has missed his daily glance at the newspapers. He asks his trusted loyalist Bubby Badal to get the fault rectified. Minutes before he reaches to address his first rally in Rajpura, the glitches are set right. But there’s another problem. Sukhbir says, “The font size is too small. Get it bigger. It strains my eyes when I read news clippings,” he tells Bubby. His personal assistant, Happy, by now has made sure that Sukhbir has responded to all the calls he could not attend while in meetings at his residence. Sukhbir asks for the day’s schedule and is not happy at the very start. His chopper at the Chandigarh airport is ready to take off. Sukhbir decides against it. “Why take the chopper for such a short journey. We’ll drive down to Rajpura. We can feel the pulse of the constituents en-route,” he says.

On the way, he spends time on the likely lead constituencies in the state. The mention of Amarinder Singh suddenly excites him. “Let Bathinda decide. If our party candidate loses, let it be my defeat. If Congress nominee loses, let it be Amarinder’s defeat. It’s between Amarinder and me,” he says. This parliamentary election is his first as the SAD president.

... contd.