CHHAPAR, LUDHIANA: The next month’s elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Assembly elections dominated Akali conferences at the famous fair of the Malwa region here today with Simranjit Singh Mann, president of the Akali Dal (Amritsar). He raised the demand of independence for the Sikhs and Parkash Singh Badal, president of the Shiromani Akali dal, promising free electricity for tube wells and canal water for farmers. “Independence is our motto. We have to attain it by ending the present life of slavery,” he declared addressing a huge gathering. At least half a dozen times the audience raised slogans of ‘azadi’ for Sikhs, raising their hand in approval as he prodded them while winding up his speech.

He listed his three point agenda for SGPC polls as attainment of independence, setting up good public school for Sikh children at sub divisional level and a professional college in each district and throwing out the “Hindu fundamentalist” BJP with which the SAD has aligned. Painting the traditional Akali leaders like Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Badal and Jagdev Singh Talwandi as traitors of the Panth, Mann Said they were not behaving differently from Master Tara Singh, who had spumed the Bnitish offer of an independent state for Sikhs on the pattern of Pakistan and India in 1947. Holding these leaders responsible for Operation Bluestar, he alleged they always hobnobbed with the Center for personal gains and had backed out of a memorandum submitted to the UN Secretary General in 1992 and later the Amritsar Delaration. Mann announced that his party is contesting the SGPC elections in alliance with the Buhujan Smaj Party.

He also announced that if voted to power, his party would open a bank which would provide easy loans to Sikh entrepreneurs and help ameliorate the lot of the downtrodden. Speaking from a nearby stage, SAD leaders like Sujit Singh Bamala and Talwandi hit out at the rival Dals saying on the eve of every election, the government props up such parties to oppose the mainstream Akalis, but people always vote for the latter. Bamala asserted that the aim of rebel candidates and splinter parties was only to garb control of Gurdwaras like the mahants of yore with an eye on their offerings.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 2, 1996