The Tribune – SGPC Elections

Calcutta writes to Centre, seeks fresh poll

Tribune News Service. Amritsar, September 22. Former SGPC secretary Manjit Singh Calcutta has shot off a missive to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, seeking fresh elections to the SGPC in a “non-partisan, judicious and democratic way.” Calcutta said the Gurdwara Election Commission had failed to conduct the elections in a free and fair manner.

Meanwhile, the All-India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) today announced that it would file a PIL before the Punjab and Haryana High Court asking the court to invalidate and set aside the SGPC elections held on September 18 due to “widespread rigging” and to issue a directive to hold fresh elections after the forthcoming assembly elections.

AISSF president Karnail Singh Peermohammad, in a statement released here, alleged that there had been statewide rigging in the recent SGPC elections.

Peermohammad said advocate Navkiran Singh would be filing the PIL before the High Court on behalf of the AISSF.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110923/punjab.htm#6

Makkar wins by 7,319 votes

Ludhiana, September 22. The SGPC president ,Avtar Singh Makkar, has won the Ludhiana West seat, securing 11,872 votes. He defeated his opponent Gurdeep Singh Gosha of the Panthic Morcha by a margin of 7,319 votes. Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) candidates won from all 18 SGPC seats.

Balwinder Singh Bains from Ludhiana South won with the highest margin of 20,685 votes, followed by Jagjit Singh Talwandi from Raikot (margin of 14,504 votes) and Ranjit Singh from Ludhiana Rural (margin of 12,206 votes). (TNS)

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110923/punjab.htm#7

Captain flays poll panel for not ordering repolling in two booths

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 22. Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Captain Amarinder Singh today criticised the Gurdwara Election Commission’s (GEC) decision not to hold repolling in two election booths in Buttar Shrin and Karaiwala villages falling in Dodha and Gidderbaha SGPC segments. The booths had allegedly been captured during the elections on September 18 by the workers of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

Amarinder Singh also demanded an inquiry into the declaration of the SGPC election results the same day of polling when they were supposed to be announced on September 22.

Making it categorically clear that as a Sikh it was his duty to question and expose the gross violations committed during the SGPC elections, he had a dig at Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for saying that “the Congress had tried to interfere in these elections”.

Reacting to the GEC’s decision not to hold repolling in the captured booths, Amarinder Singh reiterated that this “only vindicated the public perception that the SGPC elections were a sham aimed at facilitating the victory of the SAD”.

The PPCC chief said the entire election process had been vitiated right from Day One. While election results were supposed to be declared on September 22, the GEC made this public on the day of voting itself, he pointed out. Such a thing, said he, was quite unprecedented and unheard of in the electoral process. “This was clearly done to rush through the process and declare the Akalis as winners so that repolling is avoided, as happened in the case of Buttar Shrin and Karaiwala villages,” he added.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110923/punjab.htm#8

431.Sikh Ultras in Panjab

Sikhs used to be terrorists, fundamentalists, agents of the ISI, but the new buzz word is ‘Sikh Ultras’. According to the Panjab Police, the Badal Dal, Amarinder Singh and the Tribune there are Sikh Ultras, mainly from Babar Khalsa, who want to revive the Sikh terrorism of the Seventies, Eighties and early Nineties.

There appears to be a Singh behind it all, loads of RDX and other evil stuff has been confiscated and some people have been arrested. Family and friends loudly protest their innocence and allege that the arrested persons have been tortured.

In the late nineties when I lived in Panjab stories about dangerous people who were smuggled in from across the Pakistan border by the ISI, carrying weapons, ammunition and explosives, kept popping up in the press. ‘After some time’ the arrested people were discretely set free, and the ‘confiscated’ weapons etc were redeployed in the next fake arrest of ‘dangerous Khalistanis’.

I do not live in Panjab anymore, and although I try to keep in close touch with events there, it is more difficult for me to judge the present stories. I have a working theory which fits in with impressions of the mood of people on the fringe of the Khalistani movement, and with past experience of Indian practices.

There are people on the fringe of the ‘established’ Khalistani movements in countries like Canada, the UK, USA and Malaysia who are angry that so many years after 1984 the culprits of the killings in Harmandar Sahib and in Delhi and other Congress ruled cities have not been prosecuted and that no real progress has been made towards establishing Khalistan.

They have no patience with the long term strategies of the established Khalistani organisations and are looking for action, in their home countries action against what are seen as anti panthic elements, but also direct action in Panjab itself.

When I visited Lahore in 1996 and 1997 I met ‘diaspora’ Sikhs who go to Pakistan and volunteer to go into the east Panjab and explode bombs or kill politicians. The persons I met never made it across the border, all they did was shuttle between Lahore and their Islamabad ISI contacts in the hope to progress their plans.

We all know that the Pakistani army and the ISI have never been under control of the Pakistani governments, not even of the military ones.

Looking at what is served up by the Panjabi press I think that that there might be at least one real incident with some kind of Khalistani connection, and that the rest are the usual scare stories and finds of the same weapons etc again and again.

The use of violence in India or elsewhere will not be of any benefit to the Sikh Qaum. Just like in the days of Indira Gandhi, Sikh violence will only give an excuse to politicians in India and elsewhere to implement anti-Sikh measures.