The Haryana unit of the SGPC is divided over holding of the Sikh sangat in Kurukshetra on March 29. The meeting has been called by the SGPC to decide which party the Sikh community is likely to vote for in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Interestingly, representatives of all the main political parties have been invited to the sangat to present their parties’ agenda for the Sikhs if they come to power.

At the end of the presentations, the state unit of the SGPC would reward the “best” agenda by appealing to the Sikh community to follow in favour of the party with that agenda.

The leaders invited include Phool Chand Mullana, Haryana Congress president; Atam Prakash Manchanda, BJP state president; Ashok Arora, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) president; Kuldeep Bishnoi, president of the Haryana Janhit Congress; Raghubir Singh, president of Haryana CPI; and Inderjit Singh, president, CPM, Haryana.

The Sikh sangat, called by Jagidsh Jhinda, president of the Haryana unit of the SGPC, does not have the approval of Didar Singh Nalvi, general secretary of the Haryana SGPC. Nalvi has declared that their faction would not just boycott the sangat, but also reject any proposal that emerges from the sangat meeting with regard to the Lok Sabha elections.

Incidentally, both the leaders had claimed to have ‘ousted’ each other from the post last month when serious differences grew among them. Nalvi had accused Jhinda of sabotaging the demand for a separate SGPC for Haryana by having compromised with the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Haryana government, while Jhinda had accused Nalvi of siding with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to derail the movement for the separate SGPC. Talking to The Indian Express over phone, Nalvi said it was absolutely wrong to call it a SGPC Sikh sangat. “We have got nothing to do with the Sikh sangat, about which I read in newspapers. It is a programme by the Jhinda faction that neither has our approval, nor support. The sangat will definitely prove which of the two groups is stronger. We launched the separate SGPC movement in Haryana, but the Jhinda group is out to sabotage it,’’ said Nalvi.

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