Chandigarh: It has not even been a year since the Manohar Lal Khattar government constituted the current Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (HSGMC) to manage gurdwaras in the state following a Supreme Court order upholding its validity, and the ad hoc body is already riddled with infighting.
The HSGMC currently has the charge of 51 of the state’s 52 gurdwaras. However, a long-drawn conflict between the top two functionaries — president Baba Karamjit Singh and general secretary Gurvinder Singh Dhamija — of the 11-member ad hoc executive committee has forced the chief minister to intervene.
Things came to a head on 17 May when the group led by Baba Karamjit Singh ‘relieved’ Dhamija, and ‘nominated’ joint secretary Mohanjeet Singh Panipat to the post. The HSGMC even posted about the developments on Facebook.
Dhamija, a Sikh leader from Khattar’s home constituency of Karnal, is considered close to the CM, who has already held two meetings with the executive committee members this month.
On 13 June, he met with HSGMC executive members at his Chandigarh residence to resolve the differences between the two functionaries and said Dhamija will continue as the general secretary.
Khattar again counselled the HSGMC members at Panipat’s Shri Ram Dass Singh Sabha Gurdwara Wednesday, and told them to include Sant Baljit Singh Daduwal, former president of the committee, as a permanent invitee.
However, the differences persist, with Dhamija sticking to his guns and Baba Karamjit Singh making allegations in response to charges against him and claiming that his detractors are creating unnecessary hurdles.
When ThePrint contacted him Thursday, Dhamija said the executive committee didn’t have the powers to “relieve” him in the first place and such a call rests with the full house of the HSGMC.
Refusing to tell ThePrint why he was asked to resign, he said he always raised his voice against financial irregularities.
Baba Karamjit Singh, meanwhile, claimed the HSGMC was functioning smoothly. On Dhamija’s “relieving orders”, he said the decision was because of his “negative attitude”, but “CM saab has made it clear that Dhamija will stay as the general secretary. So that matter is over now.”
Allegations, counter allegations
Sources close to Dhamija claim there are irregularities in the functioning of the HSGMC.
“Baba Karamjit Singh has been misusing gurdwara funds by recruiting those close to him. An employee, who made Rs 12,000 per month with him when he was the Yamunanagar gurdwara mahant, has been hired for Rs 41,000 a month,” a source said to ThePrint.
“Another person considered close to Sukhbir Singh Badal’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is his OSD on a monthly salary of Rs 50,000,” said the source, alleging that Sikhs from Haryana freed the state’s gurdwaras from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) after years of struggle, and now a person close to the Punjab body is running the HSGMC by proxy. The SAD, show media reports, wields significant control over the SGPC.
The source also alleged that employees were being promoted and transferred to different gurdwaras arbitrarily. He added that those opposed to Baba Karamjit Singh want a probe into all the purchases, recruitments, promotions, and transfers.
Baba Karamjit Singh played down Khattar’s meeting with the HSGMC members in Panipat gurdwara and said the CM was in town and wanted to meet the members.
“When I took over in December last year, HSGMC employees (earlier with the SGPC) needed to be paid. Teachers of educational institutions run by the committee had not got their salaries for over six months,” he said to ThePrint.
“Currently, there is no backlog of unpaid salaries…our budget is Rs 109 crore, and with the golak (revenue collections of gurdwaras through offerings) rising, we plan to present a budget of Rs 200 crore next year,” he said.
On the allegation of his OSD being affiliated to the SAD, he said, “I am discharging this responsibility for the first time and I need someone well versed with the functioning of a gurdwara body.”
As for hiring a person on a Rs 41,000 per month salary, the HSGMC president said the individual was putting all income and expenditures online to bring transparency to the system.
“They were opposed to making the accounts online. They opposed the use of social media. However, we have done it all. We obtained an exemption from the Income Tax Department for donations made to the gurdwaras — my detractors didn’t know we needed that.”
SGPC & HSGMC
Haryana’s gurdwaras were managed by the Amritsar-based SGPC even after the state was carved out of Punjab in 1966. The Haryana government, led by then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, passed the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara (Management), Act, 2014, in the assembly and constituted an ad hoc HSGMC under Sant Baljit Singh Daduwal. The HSGMC managed to take charge of four gurdwaras.
However, the SGPC, which still controlled 48 of Haryana’s gurdwaras, challenged the Act in the Supreme Court which dismissed the plea on 20 September 2022, paving the way for a separate gurdwara body for Haryana. On 2 December, the same year, the state government nominated an ad hoc committee of 38 members to manage the gurdwaras till elections were held.
This ad hoc committee elected an 11-member executive committee from among them, including the president and other office bearers, on 21 December.
In January this year, the HSGMC started taking over control of gurdwaras from the SGPC, and now, 51 of them are under its wing.
“We hope to hold the elections soon and hand over the charge to the elected body,” a senior HSGMC functionary said to ThePrint.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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