Harsimrat Kaur Badal urges PM Modi to take up turban issue with French president Macron

CHANDIGARH: Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up with French President Emmanuel Macron the issue of Sikh community members in France being asked to remove their turbans for all official identification.

The Union minister for food processing said she had written to the prime minister in this regard.

Badal said she had "received repeated requests from the Sikh Community settled in France as well as the Counseil Representatif des Sikhs de France that a law which required removal of turbans while being photographed for passport, ID card, health card, transport card, driving licence or any other identification issued by the French administration was causing them severe humiliation".

Stating that the law was in a violation of Sikh tenets, Harsimrat Kaur, who is also the SAD MP from Bathinda, said the Sikh community was confident that this issue could be addressed under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi.

She said this was very important because nowhere else in the world Sikhs were subjected to this kind of discrimination.

Asserting that the turban was an integral part of the Sikh identity, Badal, in a statement here today, said there was a need to sensitise the French government about the Sikh culture.