NEW YORK: break­ing new ground in over two cen­turies, Ar­jan Singh Gho­tra and Gur­ji­wan Singh Cha­hal have com­pleted their Cadet Ba­sic Train­ing at the pres­ti­gious United States Mil­i­tary Acad­emy at West Point with full tra­di­tional Sikh gear as they were granted full re­li­gious ac­com­mo­da­tion upon in­ter­ven­tion by Sikh Coali­tion.
Sikh Coali­tion Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Sapreet Kaur has said in a press re­lease that, “This is the next ground­break­ing step that shows our na­tion’s largest em­ployer that Sikhs can ac­com­plish any­thing when given the op­por­tu­nity.” 

She fur­ther pointed out that since 2009, the Sikh Coali­tion and pro bono coun­sel, Aman­deep Sidhu, with his team from the law firm Mc­Der­mott Will & Emery, have led re­lent­less ad­vo­cacy ef­forts to end re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion by our na­tion’s largest em­ployer. Start­ing in 2014, Becket Law also part­nered with the Sikh Coali­tion on two suc­cess­ful law­suits against the De­part­ment of De­fense on be­half of four Army clients.

In Jan­u­ary 2017, the U.S. Army is­sued up­dated rules gov­ern­ing re­li­gious lib­erty that sig­nif­i­cantly im­proved the stan­dards for Sikhs and other re­li­gious mi­nori­ties who seek to serve their coun­try with their re­li­gious ar­ti­cles of faith in­tact. Ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Army, this his­toric step for­ward has trans­lated to at least 50 ob­ser­vant sol­diers now serv­ing.