Venkaiah Naidu to lay foundation stone for Kartarpur corridor today

Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu will today lay the foundation stone for the construction of a road corridor linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district with Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur in Pakistan, which will help lakhs of Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit the holy place throughout the year.

Kartarpur Sahib in Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab province is located across the Ravi River and is about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine. The demand to build a corridor linking India’s border district of Gurdaspur with the historic gurdwara, the final resting place of Sikhism’s founder Guru Nanak Dev, in Pakistan has been a long-pending demand of the Sikh community.

The Indian side of the corridor starts from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district of Punjab and extends up to the international border between India and Pakistan.

Naidu will be accompanied by Union minister of road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari, Union minister of food processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh to the foundation stone laying ceremony in the Mann village of Gurdaspur district.

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has also announced that the party’s leaders and workers would take part in the ground-breaking ceremony of the proposed corridor to Shri Kartarpur Sahib on the Indian soil while singing hymns of Gurbani on November 26.

The Indian ministry of external affairs (MEA) had issued a Note Verbale to the Pakistani government, urging it to develop a corridor with suitable facilities in its territory from the International Border to Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib to facilitate the easy access and passage of Indian pilgrims throughout the year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while participating in the Gurpurab celebrations on November 23 had said that Kartarpur Corridor could be a reason to connect people, adding that the incidents of 1947 should be left behind.

He had also added that if the Berlin Wall, which restricted the relationship between the people of East and West Germany could be pulled down, then the Kartarpur Corridor between India and Pakistan can also promote people to people contact.

The decision to build the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to the International Border was taken on November 22 by the Union Cabinet. On the same day, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had announced that Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan would be breaking the ground for the Kartarpur corridor on November 28.

Pakistan extended an invitation on November 23 to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Punjab chief minister Singh and Punjab cabinet minister and former cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor on November 28.

The invitation was, however, declined by Swaraj citing her prior commitments pertaining to election campaigns. Minister for food processing industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal and minister of state (IC) for housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri would be representing the Indian government in the ceremony.

A day later, Punjab chief minister also declined Pakistan’s invitation to attend the Kartarpur Corridor foundation-laying ceremony, citing continued terrorist attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistan armed forces as the reason.

Sidhu has accepted the invitation and will attend the opening ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor.

“The project corridor is to be developed by National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and will be funded by Government of India. The project corridor is four-lane with service road and all other appropriate amenities for pilgrims intending to visit Gurudwara Darbar Sahib, Kartarpur in Pakistan,” the ministry of road transport and highways had said in a statement.

The central government on the 550th birth anniversary of the Sikh guru gave the nod to build the Kartarpur road corridor up to the international border between India and Pakistan as an integrated development project.

First Published: Nov 26, 2018 09:16 IST