‘Embarrassed by SAD leaders’: Bibi forms party for SGPC polls

JALANDHAR: Former Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Bibi Jagir Kaur on Saturday announced to launch a new outfit, Shiromani Akali Panth Board, saying the organisation would contest SGPC elections to revive its old glory and to make it independent and end political interference in its working.
She made the announcement at a annual religious function organised in the memory of Sant Prem Singh Murale Wale at Begowal. She said she challenged the “lifafa” culture during the election of SGPC president last year and she would continue for reforms in the representative Sikh body. In her speech, she attacked political interference in the working of SGPC. “The Shiromani Akali Panth Board would involve itself only in gurdwara affairs,” she said.
“Shiromani Akali Dal was founded to help SGPC, but in the last some years, the latter had been just made a wing of the Akali Dal. In the last 25 years, there has been serious deteriorating in the working of SGPC and too much interference by political leadership of Akali Dal leaders in the working of SGPC has embarrassed the community,” she said.
On this occasion, she reiterated the agenda for SGPC which she had released while contesting the election of SGPC president last year which also included establishing a SGPC’s own channel for telecasting of Gurbani and also to work closely with Sikh intellectuals.