Bathinda, Dec. 9 -- Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday announced that he will contest the 2027 Punjab assembly elections from the Gidderbaha constituency, hinting at shifting from his long-held seat of Jalalabad. The announcement came after Sukhbir inaugurated the party office in Gidderbaha, part of his home district Muktsar, after an event held at Badal village to observe the 98th birth anniversary of his father and SAD patriarch late Parkash Singh Badal. The Gidderbaha seat was once an Akali bastion, represented by Badal senior for a record five consecutive terms between 1969 and 1985, and later by his nephew Manpreet Singh Badal from 1995 to 2007. After Manpreet broke away from the SAD and formed the People's Party of Punjab and later shifted to the BJP, he failed to regain the seat. This opened the way for Congress' Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, who went on to represent the seat for three consecutive terms from 2012 to 2022. After Warring, who was by now the state Congress president, won the Ludhiana parliamentary seat in 2024 and vacated Gidderbaha, his wife Amrita Warring was unable to retain the seat in the bypoll that followed. As the Akalis stayed away from the byelection, Sukhbir's one-time close aide Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon, who jumped ship to join AAP, defeated Amrita by a margin of 21,995 votes. The SAD has had no prominent face in Gidderbaha after Dhillon's exit. The SAD is yet to disclose the candidate for Lambi, the seat once synonymous with Parkash Singh Badal, who represented it from 1997 to 2017. Badal, an 11-time MLA and five-time CM, was defeated by AAP candidate Gurmeet Singh Khudian in 2022. Sukhbir had contested his first assembly elections from Jalalabad in Fazilka district in 2009 to assume the office of deputy chief minister. Sukhbir nurtured the seat as his stronghold and won again in 2012 and 2017. In the last elections, Sukhbir suffered a defeat at the hands of AAP's Jagdeep Goldie Kamboj....