Lt Col Partap Singh, projected by Mr G.S. Aulakh as convener of Khalsa Raj Party, has no support base worthy of mention in Punjab.
Lt Col Partap Singh had a checkered career before being named to his present post. He served the Indian Army happily and smoothly unlike the late General Subegh Singh who, while in service, has to suffer indignities at the hands of the Brahaman governments. He retired about a decade ago and is now government of India pensioner.
Col Partap Singh started visiting the late Sant Bhindranwale at Amritsar in the wake of the “Dharm yudh moroha” along with Star” in June 1984, Col Partap Singh joined the Punjab group comprising Kuldip Nayar, LK. Gujaral, General Aurora and others and became the group’s spokesman in Chandigarh.
Later he came in contact with noted Lawyer Ram Jethmalani and became a leading member of the latter’s Bharatiya Mukti Morcha, from the Janata Party. As congener of BMM’’s Punjab unit, Col Partap Singh organized a convention and brought out a publication projecting the Sikh demand of autonomy within the Indian Union.
After Jethmalani wound up BMM Col Partap Singh became a member of the working committee of Akali Dal (Mann). Col Partap Singh achieved this position by using the Jethmalani connection with Mr. Mann. The noted jurist had Mann’s brief in his legal fights. Later Partap Singh joined an organization called Movement against State Repression (MASR) and issued several statements along with Justice Ajit Singh Bains.
Col Partap Singh zealously de fended Mann when the latter Started secret and not so secret negotiations with the then Prime Minister, Mr. Chandra Shekhar, in December 1990. He criticized Punjab Human Rights Organization as a group of “mischievous men” when it objected an exercise would prove futile unless a congenial atmosphere was created.
When Mann became almost irrelevant in Punjab thanks to his ill-advised talks with Shekhar and other moves, Col Partap Singh quietly withdrew from the Mann Akali Dal and joined Mr Aulakh’s Khalsa Raj Party which, of course, is without any membership or following in Punjab.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 5, 1991
