Chandigarh: More than sixteen months after the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) put on hold its decision to display a portrait of former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in the Central Sikh Museum, the committee is yet to take a final call on the matter.
The executive committee of the SGPC had on 13 May last year approved the installation of a portrait of the former PM in the Central Sikh Museum located in the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.
However, 10 days later, on 23 May, the SGPC decided to defer the matter. The then secretary Partap Singh has said that the SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami had ordered the matter to be put on hold temporarily following objections raised by various groups.
The matter was also highlighted by former Punjab bureaucrat K. B. S. Sidhu Saturday on the 94th birth anniversary of Dr Manmohan Singh.
Sidhu said he was appealing to the SGPC to lift its sixteen-month-old stay and install the portrait forthwith.
SGPC president Dr Harjinder Singh Dhami could not be contacted despite repeated attempts to call him. The SGPC vice president Raghujit Singh Virk told ThePrint that he had only recently returned from abroad and the appropriate person to speak on the matter was the president. Balwinder Singh, heading the public relations wing of the SGPC, told ThePrint that he would be able to access the records pertaining to the decision only Monday.
The main objection to the installation of the portrait had been raised by ex-militant Balwant Singh Rajoana lodged in a Patiala jail following his conviction for the assassination of then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.
On 14 May 2025, Rajoana had addressed a letter to the SGPC, expressing his opposition on the grounds that Dr Manmohan Singh during his tenure as Prime Minister belonged to a political party responsible for killing Sikhs. “His portrait has no place in a museum that represents the pride and sacrifices of the Sikh community,” the letter read.
“The Sikh museum is a place where portraits of those persons have been installed who have sacrificed their lives to keep the Sikh faith alive. If you install Dr Manmohan Singh’s portrait tomorrow, a demand will be raised for Beant Singh’s portrait to be installed,” wrote Rajoana in the two-page handwritten letter.
BREAKING:
Sikh prisoner Bhai Balwant Singh Rajoana, lodged in Patiala Jail, has written a strong letter to SGPC President Harjinder Singh Dhami opposing the display of former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh’s photo in the Sikh Museum.
He urged SGPC to rethink its decision, calling it a… pic.twitter.com/zQjFjbloWw
— Gagandeep Singh (@Gagan4344) May 22, 2025
SGPC decided that the move be put on hold till a general consensus was taken in the matter and the sentiments of everyone were duly considered.
In January last year, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had decided to hold an Akhand Path and Ardas at Golden Temple in Dr Manmohan Singh’s memory.
The party had then also announced that it would request the SGPC to install the former PM’s portrait in the Sikh museum. “Dr Manmohan Singh’s father went to jail during the Morcha for the establishment of SGPC. He himself was a member of the All India Sikh Students Federation,” SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal had then said.
Sidhu said in a press note issued Saturday that as deputy commissioner, Amritsar, from 1992 to 1996, he often accompanied Dr Singh, then Union Finance Minister, on the Parikrama of Sri Darbar Sahib during his private visits to the city.
K. B. S. Sidhu recalled that on 13 May 2025 the SGPC’s executive committee approved portraits of five personalities for the Central Sikh Museum, Dr Manmohan Singh among them. On 23 May 2025, the SGPC President put the decision on hold by his own order, after Balwant Singh Rajoana and Dal Khalsa objected.
“The executive committee considered the proposal and said yes. The president set that decision aside within ten days by his own order. Sixteen months on, the committee has neither reaffirmed its decision nor withdrawn it,” Sidhu said.
Dr Manmohan Singh, the first turbaned Sikh to serve as Prime Minister, was among the least controversial Sikhs of his generation, Sidhu said, and even his fiercest critics never attached a scandal to his name.
“Honouring him in the Panth’s own museum should not depend on which side of the political divide he stood. A political calculation should not decide who is remembered in the Central Sikh Museum,” he said.
Sidhu recalled that Dr Singh travelled to Amritsar by the overnight train, and that his first stop was almost always Sri Darbar Sahib. He told the officers of the Income Tax and Customs Departments, both under his own ministry, not to call on him or to leave their work to attend to him.
If the SGPC cannot reach a consensus on the portrait, Sidhu proposed, it establish a Manmohan Singh School of Economics, or at least a named chair in economics, at its Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University in Fatehgarh Sahib.
“It lies within the SGPC’s own gift: Its own campus, its own executive committee, its own funds. It would give young Sikh students something more lasting than a picture on a wall, and a reason to follow him into economics,” he said.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: SGPC puts decision to display former PM Manmohan Singh’s portrait in Central Sikh Museum on hold