Unlike Mann and Tohra, Badal is seen as a humane, modern and progressive leader

Parkash Singh Badal, who returns as chief minister of Punjab for the third time, is an affluent gentleman farmer who strayed into politics almost by chance.

Seventy-year-old Pashji, as he is known throughout the state, is a different kind of Akali leader with adjectives such as moderate, pacific and liberal often used to describe him.

From being a Congress legislator in 1957 to a moderate Akali chief minister twice and to a hardliner in mid-1986 and back to moderate again, Badal has traversed a long and winding ideological course in his 40-year political career.

During these years he has also headed one of the biggest central ministries -- agriculture and irrigation -- stewarded the state government, was development minister in Justice Gurnam Singh's first Akali government of Punjab and leader of the Opposition for two assembly terms.

Tall and sturdy, Badal has won five assembly elections in a row. This is his seventh term as a legislator.

Riding the crest of unprecedented popularity following the Akali morcha against the Emergency and his incarceration for 19 months, he won the Lok Sabha seat of Faridkot in March 1977 by the biggest margin ever.

Janata Party prime minister Morarji Desai appointed him in his cabinet as Punjab's representative, but six months later, the Akali Dal decided on Badal's return to state politics.

In the seventies no Punjab leader could come close to Badal in terms of popularity. He was the most acceptable leader to all the communities in the state because of his secular outlook.

His advocacy of the All India Sikh Students Federation and the Damdami Taksal and his call for negotiations between the Centre and those detained in Jodhpur were somewhat responsible for blurring that image.

A graduate from the prestigious Roman Christian college, Lahore, (where Swami Ram Tirtha in his premonastic life served as a teacher of mathematics at the turn of the century), Pashji, received his degree just a week before Partition.

The story is told how young Badal had almost accepted the post of a tehsildar when the stalwart Sikh leader, Giani Kartar Singh, intervened and snubbed the family for pushing him into a lacklustre government post.

Kartar Singh, a shrewd politician if there was one, had seen great potential in the young man and took him under his wing.

Pashji took to politics almost immediately after his graduation by plunging into panchayat elections and being chosen sarpanch.

When he was elected chief minister of Punjab for the first time in 1970, he was the youngest man ever to occupy that office.

He has hardly anything in common with the Sikh leaders like Gurcharan Singh Tohra or Jagdev Singh Talwandi. They were poles apart, with nothing but mutual contempt for one another.

Badal left the Congress after differences with the then chief minister Partap Singh Kairon and found a haven in the Akali Dal.

In the 1967 assembly election, Badal suffered a defeat at the hands of Harcharan Singh Brar in Gidderbaha in by the slender margin of 72 votes. Brar later migrated to another constituency, sensing danger in Gidderbaha.

It is now 17 years since the Akali leader held the Punjab chief minister's office. And more than ten years since he refused to accept the Rajiv Gandhi-Harchand Singh Longowal accord and did not join the Surjit Singh Barnala government.

In 1992, he boycotted the assembly election which were being held for the first time in the post-militancy era, alleging that the poll was essentially fraudulent.

He then walked away from other Akali leaders, even against the wishes of the jathedar of the Akal Takht. He was rescued from political suicide by the Ajnala by-election in 1994. He won the seat, and then went on to outperform his Akali rivals in the block samiti and zilla parishad elections.

In 1995 he was accepted as president of the newly united Shiromani Akali Dal. Badal has shown tremendous courage in turning down on grounds of principle the Amritsar declaration adopted by his Akali rivals.

Unlike Tohra and Simranjit Singh Mann, who have been increasingly speaking the language of religion, Badal is seen as a humane, modern and progressive leader who stands for economic progress and communal harmony, so dear to the Sikh heart.

There are, however, people who felt that Badal has not been able to acquire national stature because he shies away from pursuing some of the issues raised by him to their logical conclusion.

In 1992, when Badal was in the Katori rest house which had then been declared a temporary jail, he had said, ''we are all human. There is no limit to human weakness and frailty and to human strength. You have just got to handle things.''