New Delhi, August 19
Punjab Chief Secretary Y.S. Ratra has been summoned by the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) here on August 27 at 11.30 a.m. to discuss last month’s Malout incident and obviate the recurrence of such ugly situations.
In its communication of August 16, the NCM urged Mr Ratra to come with the necessary files and documents and warned that non-compliance would be liable to all legal consequences of a lawful authority of competent jurisdiction.
The seven-member NCM Board is worried about the new trend gaining ground in Punjab among certain sections to attack the scriptures of the Sikh religion coupled with the proliferation of "deras."
It is in this context that Mr Ratra’s discussions with the NCM assume significance and the incident as evidenced at Malout should not be allowed to go out of hand or be whipped up as another minority problem in Punjab.
The NCM observed that it had taken cognisance of Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann’s complaint imploring the commission to hold an impartial probe into the matter and remove the suspicions of Sikhs.
On August 5, Mr Mann, in a letter to the NCM, stated: "The Sikhs feel that the Union Government, its intelligence agencies and the Congress government in Punjab are hand in glove in grooming schismatic cults. These cults offend Sikh sensibilities as a result of which Sikhs have no option but to confront them in a peaceful manner to begin with and when the state resorts to violence and repression, the Sikhs try to pay it back in the same coin."
In summoning Mr Ratra, the NCM said it was a high-powered statutory body empowered by Parliament to monitor the working of rights and safeguards provided in the Constitution and laws of the country for the minorities, and to look into specific complaints regarding deprivation of such rights and safeguards by exercising all powers of a civil court.
