Surjit Singh Barnala (21 October 1925 – 14 January 2017) was an Indian politician who served as the 11th chief minister of Punjab state from 1985 to 1987.

Subsequently, he practised law for some years, and became politically active in the late 1960s, rising through the ranks of Akali Dal.

Barnala's first ministerial assignment was in 1969 when he has sworn in as education minister in the Justice Gurnam Singh Government and was instrumental in setting up the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar.

In 1977 he was elected to the Indian Parliament and was inducted in the Morarji Desai Cabinet as the agriculture minister at the time when the ministry included Irrigation Water Resources, Food, Environment and Forests, Consumer Affairs, Power and Chemical And Fertilizers and Rural Development.

In 1998, Barnala was again elected to Parliament and became the minister for Chemical & Fertilizers and Food & Consumer Affairs in the Vajpayee Cabinet.

Like few other anti-Congress leaders of his time, he has spent about three and a half years in jail as a political prisoner, including 11 months in solitary confinement.

Barnala refused to recommend the dismissal of the Tamil Nadu government, and when he was later transferred as governor of Bihar he chose to resign.

In 1996, Barnala authored a book, Story of an Escape, about his experiences of living a disguised life in various locations of India.