Chandigarh, October 31
In an important decision at the SAD’s political affairs committee today, Mr Mall Singh Ghuman and Mr Partap Singh were expelled for their “anti-party’’ activities. It was Mr Ghuman, a former Chairman of the Punjab Mandi Board, who has set up a seven-member core committee of SGPC members and raised the voice to “de-politicise’’ SGPC and elect an “apolitical’’ person as its President, since the mini Parliament of the Sikhs has been intensely politicised.
The resolution adopted against the two says that what Mr Ghuman and Mr Partap Singh were doing was at the behest of the Congress party in connivance with the likes of Mr Gurcharan Singh Tohra and Mr Ravi Inder Singh, who were dubbed as protege of Capt Amarinder Singh.
The SAD committee decided to launch an indefinite “morcha’’ from Amritsar, beginning November 15.
After considering many options on its programme to force the government to accept SAD’s 15-point charter of demands, released on October 20, PAC is learnt to have zeroed in on “morcha’’. This is likely to be organised constituency-wise.
Though the official resolution is silent on the form of the “mass agitation’’, the decision on “morcha’’ found favour with the members, say reliable sources. The Akalis want to fill jails. The government is unlikely to arrest them, say official sources.
The proposed mass agitation is directed against the Congress government’s policies that has allegedly let loose a reign of terror in the state. It is also directed against unfulfilled promises made in the Congress election manifesto as also government’s gross interference in the religious affairs of the Sikhs, meaning subverting SGPC Presidential poll in Amritsar on November 12.
The PAC meeting at the official residence of Mr Parkash Singh Badal today was followed by one of the party’s past and present MPs, MLAs, district units’ office-bearers etc at Kalgidhar Niwas, where strategy was chalked out for the mass agitation. SAD had held tehsil-level sit-in protests in the state on October 28.
It has appealed to all Punjabis to join-in the “morcha’’ of SAD.
The SAD today also took cognizance of the “humiliation’’ meted out to Sikh Gurdwara Judicial Commission member, Mr Dara Singh and the manner in which he had been “framed’’ by the government to create confusion in SGPC elections.
