AMRITSAR: Six Panthic organizations at a meeting held here recently, decided to contest the municipal committee elections fixed for September 6, but issued a rider that no one would use the party symbol for the elections. The organizations had boycotted the Punjab elections held last February. The meeting in are solution also demanded that the state government should immediately hold elections to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC).
Those who participated in the meeting included Simranjit Singh Mann, president, Akali Dal (Mann), Parkash Singh Badal, president Akali Dal (Badal), Bhai Manjit Singh, president, AISSF (Manjit), Sikh Students Federation (SSF) and a representative of the Babbar Akali Dal, and Baba Joginder Singh president, Akali Dal (Baba).
It was announced that August 15 would be celebrated as a black day by wearing black badge or turban or any other black sign.
Briefing the press, Mann said that in fact the August 15 was a “slavery day” for the Sikh panth.
The militants’ surrender at Tarn Taran and in Chandigarh was termed as a big hoax. Mann and Badal said that there were over 200 boys in the custody of the Tarn Taran police of which 71 were shown as having surrendered to the police. These boys were not involved in any crime, they asserted.
Badal and Mann and Bhai Manjit Singh said that the Babbar Khalsa International chief Bhai Sukhdev Singh Babbar and Khalistan Commando Force chief Bhai Gurjant Singh Budsinghwala were shot dead in “fake encounters” after arresting them.
These leaders charged that to “defame and malign” Bhai Sukhdev Singh Babbar the Patiala police concocted the story of his living at a “white house’ in urban estate, Patiala,
Mann said that the mother and the sister of Bhai Bagicha Singh Khalsa and Bhai Punjab Singh were in “illegal detention” of the Tam Taran police, and both were being tortured.
Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 28, 1992
