SGPC against formation of Haryana Gurdwara Committee

Ludhiana, Mar 8 (UNI) The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) today criticised the reported move of Congress leaders to form a separate Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee for the Sikhs of Haryana.

''This move has the backing of the Congress party and tantamounts to interference in the religious affairs of the Sikhs,'' a resolution unanimously passed by the SGPC executive said at its meeting here.

The resolution claimed that the Congress interferred in the religious affairs of the Sikhs with the sole motive to divide the community, the resolution passed in the presence of SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar said.

It also claimed that the move had the backing of the Haryana government.

The committee pointed out that the SGPC had been formed by an Act of Parliament and it was the sole body that had the right to manage Sikh affairs, including management of historical Gurdwaras in Punjab and Haryana and certain other states.

The Haryana government had last year formed a committee under Agriculture Minister H S Chatha to take views of the Sikhs of the state on the formation of a separate Gurdwara committee. The government took this decision after a large section of the Sikhs had approached it and demanded that the state should have a separate Gurdwara management committee as the SGPC had been adopting a ''discriminatory attitude'' towards the community living in Haryana.

In another resolution, the executive decided to summon the Budget session of the SGPC at Amritsar on March 30.

UNI