At ThePrint’s Off The Cuff event last year, Punjab CM Capt. Amarinder Singh alleged that some of Justin Trudeau’s ministers were ‘Khalistanis’.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is currently on a week-long visit to India. The visit has particularly garnered attention because the Modi government is said to have snubbed the Canadian PM.
The reason behind this being the perception that Trudeau has been supportive of the Khalistani cause — creation of a separate Sikh nation dividing India.
Punjab CM Capt. Amarinder Singh too has expressed fears that the diaspora is trying to revive the Khalistani militancy in Punjab and is attempting to destabilise the state.
Trudeau and his family are being accompanied by Canadian ministers of Indian origin Harjit Sajjan, Amarjeet Sohi, Navdeep Bains and Bardish Chagger.
While the Punjab CM will be meeting Trudeau Wednesday, he had refused to meet Canadian defence minister Sajjan last year.
“You know they never let me go to speak there. When I was in America and next I was to go to Canada, these Khalistani lobbies got together, all these Sajjans and the others; I am not going to meet him. He’s coming to Punjab… I’m not going to go, I’ll put some minister in-charge,” Amarinder Singh had said at the Off The Cuff in Delhi in April 2017.
The Punjab CM was in conversation with ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta and Associate Editor Ruhi Tewari.
Singh had said that Harjit Sajjan and his father were part of the separatist radical movement in Canada.
“His father was the president of the whole thing,” he said.
Harjit Sajjan’s parents are said to have been active and long term members of World Sikh Organization, a Canada-based Sikh Advocacy Group with alleged links to the Khalistani movement.
Amarinder Singh also claimed that some of the ministers in the Trudeau’s cabinet were ‘Khalistanis’.
“I’ll tell you on a matter of principle, I don’t agree on this, there are…ministers there who are Khalistanis and I’m not interested in meeting any Khalistanis,” he added.