Chandigarh: The Bhagwant Mann government in Punjab Tuesday succeeded in getting a controversial amendment to the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, passed in the assembly. The amendment allows multiple channels to relay the Gurbani from the Golden Temple — something currently done by only one channel.
In getting the amendment passed, the state government defied the jathedar of the Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of the Sikhs. On Monday, the jathedar had asked the government to desist from any move that could be seen as an attempt to dilute the authority of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
The SGPC is a body created under the 1925 Act that controls and manages historical gurdwaras in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. The Akal Takht jathedar had also called for a “calm” discussion on the issue between the state government and the SGPC.
The amendment was passed with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs present in the House voting in its favour, while those of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) opposed it. The Congress MLAs had walked out of the assembly Tuesday — at the beginning of the second day of the special session — and decided to boycott the rest of the session.
With 92 members in the 117-seat assembly, the AAP has a brute majority in the house.
The Mann government has justified the move as a bid to ensure the masses have access to the Gurbani from Golden Temple.
Speaking in the Punjab assembly, Mann said the relay of the Gurbani from the Golden Temple should be available on every channel or source that wished to air it.
The SGPC, however, has said the amendment amounts to interference of the government in the religious affairs of the Sikhs.
PTC, the channel airing the Gurbani, has weighed in too, with channel head Rabindra Narayan challenging the CM to prove that any of the PTC channels required users to pay money to tune in.
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‘Gurbani for every household’
The SGPC has claimed that the relay of the Gurbani from the Golden Temple has to be done in a controlled environment to ensure that the “maryada” — or the code of conduct — is not violated by the channel transmitting it.
The SGPC has also said that after the 11-year contract of PTC ends next month, it will float a global tender to choose another channel to relay the Gurbani.
On Monday morning, ahead of the assembly session, the jathedar of the Akal Takht, Giani Raghbir Singh, issued directions to the Punjab government to desist from taking any step that would cause confusion among the Sikh masses over the issue.
He also directed the SGPC to submit a report to the Akal Takht regarding the steps it had taken to ensure that the Gurbani is available to the Sikh masses with keeping in mind the maryada. He appealed to both the Punjab government and the SGPC to discuss the issue calmly and with a positive attitude towards one another.
However, Punjab Chief Minister Mann, while speaking on the floor of the Vidhan Sabha, launched a scathing attack on the SGPC for allowing undue control of a particular family over the rights to telecast the sacred Gurbani.
He also hit out at Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal for “using religion to garner votes”.
Mann claimed that the amendment is in no way interference in religious affairs. Rather, he said, it is a simple step to ensure that Gurbani reaches every household.
Mann said he was a humble Sikh himself and wanted free-to-air telecast of the Gurbani across the globe.
Meanwhile, PTC head Narayan said in a video message that all the PTC channels were enlisted as free-to-air channels by the Government of India.
He said that viewers of PTC channels had never paid even a single rupee to watch any of the channels offered by their group. The CM, he added, had misled the public into believing that PTC garnered crores by giving advertisements before and after the relay of the Gurbani, which he said was not true.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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