Chandigarh: Amid a decline in its electorate, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) — the apex body of Sikhs in India — said that it has failed to get Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attention on its demand of releasing the ‘Bandi Singhs’ but decided to continue to pursue the cause.
The ‘Bandi Singhs’ are former Sikh militants incarcerated in various jails across the country for three decades or more now. The demand for their release started over a decade ago, with the SGPC leading the cause.
On 29 March, SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami said it’s unfortunate that a five-member committee constituted in December last year by the Akal Takht — the highest temporal body of the Sikhs — to seek the release of the prisoners has received no response from the PM despite several efforts. Dhami reiterated the demand as one of the ten resolutions passed by the SGPC general house in its budget meeting last month.
Noting the “negative attitude” towards the committee, the SGPC resolution said that the government was not serious about recognising the supremacy and dignity of the Akal Takht.
Dhami said the general house resolved to ask the government to respect the Akal Takht and start a mutual dialogue through the committee so that the Sikh community does not have to resort to a struggle.
Over the years, the issue of the release of ‘Bandi Singhs’ has emerged as an emotive subject not only among hardliner Sikhs but also a large section of the Sikh population in Punjab.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has consistently backed the demand. Following the breakdown of its talks with the BJP about an alliance in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, the issue will likely take center stage in the SAD campaign this election.
The matter will also likely be one of the crucial rallying points during the SGPC elections, expected later this year. The SGPC, once a 190-member body, has lost 11 members to a separate gurdwara committee in Haryana and is struggling to muster a substantial electorate in Punjab. The number of ‘keshdhari’ Sikhs (who have not shorn their hair) eligible to vote in the SGPC elections has reduced dramatically over the past 13 years.
In 2011, during the last elections to the SGPC, the number of ‘keshdhari‘ voters was 52 lakh while, this year, the number has dropped to 27.5 lakh, reflecting a disenchantment among the Sikhs in the election process.
Back in December 2022, the SGPC started a worldwide signature campaign for the release of nine ‘Bandi Singhs’. According to Dhami, “more than 10 lakh people” had signed the SGPC demand letter sent to the President of India in December last year.
Last month, Akal Takht jathedar Giani Raghbir Singh said that Modi should extend the same compassion that he showed for the eight Indian prisoners on death row in Qatar to the Sikh prisoners languishing in jails for a long time.
‘It’s a long battle’
The movement for the ‘Bandi Singhs’ started in 2013 when the demand to release Sikh militants jailed during militancy in Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s found a platform in organisations like the SGPC.
Over the years, an initial list of 119 such prisoners has come down to two dozen after some of them completed their sentences while the protests led to other releases.
Meanwhile, a sit-in protest by Quami Insaaf Morcha — a group of Sikh bodies — seeking the release of nine ‘Bandi Singhs’ has continued in Mohali on the Punjab-Chandigarh border since January last year.
Although the sit-in protest has not seen much activity in the past few months, in February last year, the protesters clashed with police when they were stopped from marching to Chandigarh.
The protest also made news when some of the protesters attacked the vehicle of SGPC President Dhami while he was leaving the protest site after addressing a gathering.
All the nine prisoners, barring one, have already spent 25-32 years in jail. Seven of the nine were convicted in the assassination of Punjab CM Beant Singh. Two of the seven were on death row.
Beant Singh and 16 others were killed 31 August 1995 by suicide bomber Dilawar Singh Babbar in Chandigarh. In 2007, a CBI court handed death sentences to Jagtar Singh Hawara and Balwant Singh Rajoana for their role in the assassination.
Five others — Gurmeet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh Lakha, Shamsher Singh, Paramjit Singh Bheora, and Jagtar Singh Tara — were sentenced to life.
While a lower court has since commuted Hawara’s death sentence to life term, a mercy petition for commuting Rajoana’s death sentence is pending before the Supreme Court.
In January, the Quami Insaaf Morcha marked one year of its sit-in protest by holding gatherings outside more than a dozen toll plazas in Punjab, forcing the authorities not to charge any toll from commuters.
“There are no issues pending in courts about the release of the ‘Bandi Singhs’… the decision to release them has to be taken by the government, and till that happens, the protest will continue. It’s a long battle,” advocate Amar Singh Chahal, one of the Morcha leaders, told ThePrint.
Last week, the Punjab and Haryana High Court pulled up the Punjab government for not clearing the roads blocked by the Quami Insaaf Morcha on the Mohali-Punjab border.
During the resumed hearing of a public interest litigation filed by a road safety non-governmental organisation, Arrive Safe, a division bench headed by acting chief Justice G.S. Sandhawalia said the state government was given several opportunities but failed to remove the blockade.
The division bench added that the protesters using the Guru Granth Sahib to draw legitimacy for their protest was no reason for the government to not act against them.
Arrive Safe had moved a petition in the high court last year, seeking the removal of the blockade on the road because it was causing inconvenience to commuters, apart from being a flash point that could trigger a law and order problem.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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