New Delhi, April 9
The plan to form a separate Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee to manage the Sikh affairs and gurdwaras in Haryana got a new lease of life as Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi to ensure that Sikhs in the state get a right to determine their own affairs.
At present, the Amritsar-based SGPC controls the affairs and this is controlled by the Shiromani Akali Dal led by Prakash Singh Badal.
The issue had reached a deadlock after the Haryana government did not introduce the Bill in the assembly during the just ended budget session despite being ready with a draft of the same. This had dejected the supporters of a separate SGPC.
Political observers in Haryana believed that the Congress high command was treading with caution lest it was dubbed as “anti-Sikh” by the Akalis.
Formation of a separate SGPC for Sikhs in Haryana was one of the major points in the Congress manifesto in the last assembly elections as the party had promised that it would consider the demand sympathetically.
Sources in the Haryana government said Hooda took up the issue with Gandhi today after his colleagues from the Congress had raised the issue at a coordination meeting of the Haryana congress yesterday evening.
An ad hoc body has been formed to run the affairs of the Sikhs in Haryana, however, it has no powers as it is yet to be formalised legally. A formal bill will have to be introduced in the state assembly but before that a political decision has to be made. The Sikhs have separate SGPCs in Delhi and Jammu and
Kashmir and a section of the Sikh population has been demanding the same in Haryana.
The Sikhs have a 17 lakh strong population and most of it is concentrated in the districts of Ambala, Yammunagar, Panchkula, Kurkshetra, Karnal and some parts of Sirsa and Fatehabad.
The Amritsar-based SGPC led by its chief Avtar Singh Makkar and Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal have opposed the formation of a separate SGPC tooth and nail.
Sukhbir Badal, working president of the SAD, recently termed it as a move to divide Sikhs on regional lines by weakening the SGPC. The Congress was supporting the creation of separate gurdwara committees in other states for political reasons, Sukhbir had alleged.
