The Hindu : Advani's yatra raises controversy in Punjab

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 08, 2004

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Advani's yatra raises controversy in Punjab

By Sarabjit Pandher

A Nihang performs `Gatka' (Sikh martial art) on the occasion of Holla Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib on Sunday.

CHANDIGARH, MARCH 7. The proposed "Bharat Uday Yatra'' by the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, is all set to become a major controversy in Punjab. While the main opposition party, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), has announced its programme to welcome it, various other Akali factions and radical Sikh organisations have aired their disagreement.

According to the much- publicised programme, the first leg of Mr. Advani's programme criss-crossing the country would terminate at Amritsar on March 26. The State unit of the BJP is making all out efforts to ensure that the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also addresses the rally. The Punjab unit of the Congress has taken a shot at the SAD leadership, asking them to come out clean on the issue after Mr. Advani was quoted in the media as to appealing to the electorate to ignore the regional parties.

The Congress wants the SAD president, Parkash Singh Badal, to clarify his position. The party has also expressed apprehensions that Mr. Advani's visit carried the potential to disturb the communal harmony in the State.

Addressing a congregation at the Hola Mohalla festival in Anandpur Sahib on Saturday, MP and president of the SAD (Amritsar), Simranjit Singh Mann, appealed to international bodies to take a serious note of Mr. Advani's yatra, which according to him was an icon of the "bloody agenda of the fundamentalist BJP''. He said that it was blatant attempt to terrorise the minorities to vote in BJP's favour.

Continuing in the same vein, the general secretary of the radical Sikh organisation, Dal Khalsa, Kanwarpal Singh Bittu, said that the yatra was meant to propagate Hindutava brand of politics. He asked the Akalis to explain their position on Mr. Advani's recent remarks asking voters "not to vote for regional parties''. Other Sikh organisations, including the Panthic Board, Khalsa Panchayat and fringe Akali factions, have termed the proposed event as part of RSS's long- drawn "anti-Sikh programme''. Some have even threatened to organise protest demonstrations enroute the yatra. On the other hand, the member of the Executive Committee of the Punjab unit of the BJP, Sukhminder Singh Grewal, warned all those elements, who were opposing Mr. Advani's yatra. He said that the youth of the State would not remain mute spectators to any disruptive attempt by those forces whose "separatist'' credentials were known to all.

He said that the Congress and certain other mischievous elements had panicked after reading the mood of the people, who were impatient to vote the NDA back to power.

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Advani's yatra raises controversy in Punjab