Punjab: ‘Met Sukhbir Singh Badal to convey my wish to contest Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee polls’

JALANDHAR: Former Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Bibi Jagir Kaur, who is set to contest election for the SGPC president’s post to be held on November 9, has revealed that after the date was announced, she called on the SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal to convey her wish to contest. She has said that the need is to end the perception that presidents were coming out of ‘lifafa (an envelope sent by the SAD president)’. In the combination of religion and politics, primacy of religion needs to be restored, she added.
“Yes, I had met Sukhbir Singh Badal after the announcement of the election, to urge him to field me as candidate for the top post,” she said while talking to TOI on Wednesday. Asked about the response, she said, he had not given any response but had not said no either.
“When election for the top post of the representative Sikh body is held, Sikhs usually say that the president comes out of ‘lifafa’. There is a common refrain among members, that there is a dire need to end this perception,” she said.
“Our politics needs to be guided by religion, and not the other way round. That is the idea of religion and politics going together in Sikhism, and that remains the guiding principle of the SAD and SGPC,” she argued.
“Our primary goal is to protect panthic interests, but people are angry that Bargari sacrilege happened during a panthic government. This increased the anger manifold and is the reason why what we have faced is not like usual ups and downs faced by a party, but a much serious thing. People have no complaints about the development agenda. It is due to this reason that intellectuals and other organisations of the community have drifted away from our party and the SGPC. We need to bring them back close to the SGPC and SAD.
“If I have expressed my wish to contest for the top post it is not a challenge at all, as a few people are wrongly projecting, but my intention to work for strengthening both the institutions. SAD is the only political party of the Sikhs and it needs to be very strong to protect the interests of the community and Punjab,” she said.
Kaur added that some of the works she wanted to undertake during her last tenure could not be fulfilled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “I intend to finish those tasks apart from starting new ones,” she said.