Difficult days lie ahead for the Shiromani Akali Dal and the family of its president, Sukhbir Badal, with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections getting closer. While some senior leaders recently left the party, a two-day Panthic Assembly that began in Amritsar on Sunday described the Badals as “killers of Sikhs and traitors of the Panth”, and called upon the community to boycott them.
While the Badal bahu Harsimrat Kaur Badal represents the Bhatinda constituency in the Parliament, former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal, current president of the party, will have to turn in respectable results. The party derives its voter base from the Sikh community. The assembly addressed an issue that had been simmering among the Sikhs for some years now — that the Akal Takhat and the SGPC had become the fiefdoms of the Shiromani Akali Dal, more particularly the Badals.
A resolution noted that two major incidents of sacrilege that rocked the community—first in 1978 and then in 2015— when senior Badal was the chief minister.
The Panthic Assembly also demanded a government ban on the Dera, under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. The assembly wanted the ban to extend to all the congregation centres — they call them namcharcha ghar— and other institutions of the Dera. This puts Chief Minister Amarinder Singh in a tight spot —the Dera followers were said to have voted for the Congress in the assembly elections in 2017
Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim being in prison has done nothing to dilute the Sikh anger against the self-styled 'guru' or his agencies, a resolution of the 'assembly' noted.
The resolution mentioned the fact that the Dera was already under the scrutiny of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and demanded that it be sealed. “No trace of this anti-Sikh blasphemous Dera must be allowed to exist in Punjab and Haryana,” the resolution read, adding that justice for Sikhs will not be done till the Dera chief is tried in the courts and punished for his acts of blasphemy and sacrilege.
The Panthic assembly itself has no legal or institutional backing as it was formed spontaneously. It was the result of many Sikh groups questioning the way the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandak Committee, the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee functioned while dealing with the Dera.
About a month ago, former SGPC general secretary Sukhdev Singh Bhaur had announced that several panthic groups would convene a Panthic assembly that would have as many members as there are in the Punjab state legislature, would go through reports of the three commissions on the sacrilege issues involving the Dera and pass resolutions.
In what is tantamount to questioning the performance of the SAD, the SGPC and the DSGMC, the assembly discussed the role of the Takhat jathedars and said the recent resignation of Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh was not on account of failing health, “but due to the failing standards of the working of the august institution of the Akali Takhat Sahib under the present dispensation”. The jathedar, according to the resolution, was under pressure from the top leadership of the SAD in taking certain decisions. He had exonerated the Dera chief in 2015 leading to turmoil in Punjab.
