New Delhi, November 9

SAD leader and former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Tuesday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reopen the Kartarpur Corridor and revive the proposal for inclusion of this holy land into India through a land swap agreement with Pakistan.

In a letter to Modi, Badal also requested him to take up the issue of a “peace corridor” linking all the historical religious places in Pakistan with access provided to devotees from all across the world, especially from India.

The Akali Dal has been demanding a permanent peace corridor connecting Sikh shrines Nankana Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib, Hindu temple Katas Raj and other religious places in Pakistan.

“I am writing this to give voice to the overwhelming sentiment of the devout and brave Sikh masses not only for the re-opening of the Indo-Pak corridor to facilitate devotees to have an un-interrupted darshan of the sacred Gurdwara Sahib at Kartarpur Sahib (Pakistan) but also for according it the status of ‘Permanent Peace Corridor’ between the two countries,” said Badal, who was a minister in the Narendra Modi government till last year.

Reiterating the long-standing demand for inclusion of Kartarpur into India by swapping land, Badal said, “Sikh devotees all over the world want that India and Pakistan should swap territories so that Kartarpur Sahib forms a part of the Indian mainland.”          

Underlining that the demand for inclusion of Kartarpur was first raised by the Akali Dal in 1948 and late Akali leader Kuldeep Singh Wadala organised protests for decades in support of it, the former minister said the “proposal was shot down by both the Pakistan government and, strangely, by the then Congress government in Punjab”.               

 “Time has come to renew this proposal for the permanent inclusion of the sacred Kartarpur Sahib shrine into India with suitable exchange of territory,” she wrote to the prime minister.

Recalling Prime Minister Modi’s words at the inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor and describing it as a historic achievement in the same class as the pulling down of the Berlin Wall, Badal said she requested him to intervene personally and urgently to get the necessary diplomatic and other steps initiated for its reopening.

The corridor links Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district in Punjab. — PTI