Frame rehabilitation policy for Afghanistan Sikhs, Centre urged

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 20

Appreciating the Centre’s move to grant e-visa facility to evacuate the members of the minority community from trouble-torn Afghanistan, the SGPC has urged the government to frame a concrete policy to rehabilitate them ‘constitutionally’ in the country.

SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami attended the ‘antim ardas’ for Sawinder Singh, who died in the attack on a gurdwara in Kabul, at Gurdwara Guru Arjan Dev in Delhi’s Tilak Nagar today.

Expressing concern over the survival of the minorities, Dhami said, “Scores of Afghan Sikhs have migrated to India earlier too.

We can provide them temporary relief like accommodation or food, but the Indian Government should absorb them constitutionally and help them have a regular livelihood.”

Meanwhile, BJP leader and Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Managing Committee ex-president Manjinder Singh Sirsa said in October 2021, Afghanistan-based terror outfit Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) had threatened

the Sikhs and Hindus to make a choice between converting to Sunni Islam and leaving Afghanistan.”

Gurpreet Singh, director, United Sikhs, said though the ISKP had taken the responsibility of the attack as a fallout of the innocuous remarks on Prophet Muhammad, these incidents with minorities had occurred earlier too. “The repeated attacks appeared to have been designed to scare away the Sikhs and Hindus as they want Afghanistan society to be Islamic in nature and faith,” he added.

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