139 Sikh pilgrims return from Pak

[me moorakh mugadh]

139 Sikh pilgrims return from Pak

PTI[ MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2003 01:11:32 AM ]

WAGAH, (Amritsar): The delegation of 139 Sikh pilgrims, which had gone to Pakistan to observe martyrdom day of fifth Sikh Guru Arjan Dev, returned home on Sunday and said the people there are eagerly waiting for resumption of normal rail and road links between the two countries.

On reaching the Wagah border, the pilgrims told reporters that they had been received warmly by the Pakistani masses. They said hundreds of Pakistan nationals who came to Gurdwara Dera Sahib in Lahore had chiefly one question to ask them: "When is the Indian government going to resume normal rail and road links with Pakistan". Muslims families who had married off their daughters to persons in India told the Sikh jatha members that hundreds of families had applied for visa with the Indian embassy in Islamabad.

The jatha had gone to Pakistan on June 14. Though the SGPC in India and PSGPC in Pakistan has been at loggerheads since 1999, the leader of the jatha and SGPC member Swinder Singh Sabarwal was this time presented a siropa (honour) by the PSGPC, said Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee member Balwinder Singh. The siropa was presented to Sabarwal by the PSGPC cochairman Sham Singh.

The PSGPC had in 1999 taken away the management and control of all the Pakistan based Sikh gurdwaras from the SGPC and since then no SGPC member used to lead the Sikh jatha to Pakistan. The SGPC was never in favour of according recognition to the PSGPC since 1999 with the result no SGPC member has so far accepted siropa from the PSGPC.

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[S1ngh]

The Sikh jatha returns from Pakistan on Sunday via the Wagah checkpost after paying obeisance at various gurdwaras in Pakistan on the occasion of Martyrdom Day of Guru Arjan Dev.

— Photo Rajiv Sharma