Badal urges PM to intervene and address sentiments of Sikh community

Says wrong message has been sent to the patriotic community which has contributed most to the freedom struggle as well as guarding the borders of the country)

Chandigarh, (Gurpreet) – Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and address the sentiments of the Sikh community which was perturbed about the complete omission of members from their community in the latest notified list of advocates who have been elevated as Additional Judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the SAD President said “I am confident that you will be concerned that not a single member from the Sikh community has been chosen for elevation from among the eleven advocates whose appointments have been notified by the union government. This has caused immense dismay as this comes at a time when there is not a single Sikh judge in the Supreme Court”.

Mr Sukhbir Badal said there was no dearth of Sikh and other Punjabi legal luminaries who had distinguished themselves in serving the society. “Such able personalities should be considered for elevation to the top courts of the country including the Punjab and Haryana high court”, he said while urging the Prime Minister to personally intervene in the matter and rectify the situation.

Telling the Prime Minister that a wrong message has been sent to the nationalistic Sikh community with their omission from top judicial appointments, Mr Badal said “this community has contributed the most to the freedom struggle as well as guarding the frontiers of the country. The Sikh community has given the nation revolutionaries like Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. As many as 121 members of the Sikh community have kissed the gallows in the fight for freedom. As many as 2,147 Sikhs were interred at Kala Pani (Andamans and Nicobar islands) from among the total 2,646 inmates incarcerated there as part of their life sentence. All this is a matter of record”, he told the Prime Minister.

Mr Badal also informed the Prime Minister that besides the issue of judicial appointments, Punjabis had been severely victimized in the past. “We are the only ones who don’t have their own capital; we don’t have right over our waters as per the riparian principle and have lost our Punjabi speaking areas at the time of reorganization of the State. We have also been adversely affected because our neighbours were given special economic packages”, he disclosed while requesting the Prime Minister to take up all pending issues including that of judicial appointments sympathetically.