Ig­nor­ing the Supreme Court of In­dia or­der in 2012-13 for mak­ing photo iden­tity cards for gen­eral Sikh vot­ers for the DS­GMC elec­tion and then rub­bish­ing a sim­i­lar or­der of the Delhi High Court in 2016, prior to the 2017 DS­GMC gen­eral elec­tions, now the Di­rec­torate of Gur­d­wara Elec­tions of the Gov­ern­ment of Delhi, which is man­dated to con­duct DS­GMC elec­tions un­der the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Act is fac­ing ju­di­cial re­view by the Delhi High Court, with the case com­ing up for fi­nal hear­ing on 15 Sep­tem­ber 2020, af­ter a brief hear­ing on 7 Sep­tem­ber 2020.

After mak­ing a hur­ried an­nounce­ment to start mak­ing voter rolls – on­line and of­fline, sub­se­quent to a quickly-called all-party meet at the Di­rec­torate of­fices, the Di­rec­torate of Gur­d­wara Elec­tions is now caught in a quag­mire with the in­cum­bent party Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Badal, seek­ing fresh voter rolls, whereas the Jago Party, ex­pect­ing to cash-in on a per­ceived anti-Badal wave, want­ing to have elec­tions on the ba­sis of the pre­vi­ous 4-year-old voter rolls. The mat­ter is sub ju­dice and will be taken up by the Delhi High Court as an ur­gent mat­ter at the in­ter­ven­tion of the Jago Party.

At the in­ter­ven­tion of the Jago party, the case was heard on 7 Sep­tem­ber 2020, but no con­clu­sive de­ci­sion was made and the case was de­ferred to 15 Sep­tem­ber for fi­nal hear­ing.

The Di­rec­torate con­ducted a meet­ing of all par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tions as per the 2017 rolls on 19 Au­gust 2020 and made a lack­lus­tre, ill-pre­pared an­nounce­ment to con­duct the elec­tions in time on the ba­sis of the Delhi As­sem­bly voter lists. They also an­nounced to reg­is­ter votes on­line and of­fline from 20 Au­gust on­wards. The di­rec­torate also clar­i­fied that be­cause of the COVID19 sit­u­a­tion, it was not pos­si­ble to reach every Sikh home and make fresh votes. The Di­rec­torate failed to tell the elec­torate that votes of the Delhi As­sem­bly and the DS­GMC fol­low dif­fer­ent acts and dif­fer­ent rules.

On the evening of 19 Au­gust, Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Badal went to court chal­leng­ing this. The Jago party al­leged that it was a ruse and elec­tions can be con­ducted as per old voter rolls.

How fla­grantly has the Di­rec­torate been vi­o­lat­ing court or­ders can be seen from the fact that the 2013 and the 2017 court or­ders to pre­pare fresh voter rolls were sim­ply over­looked and the elec­tions were con­ducted on the ba­sis of old voter rolls of 1983!

Sig­nif­i­cantly, a meet­ing was held be­tween the se­nior lead­ers of var­i­ous par­tic­i­pat­ing groups of Delhi, AAP MLA Jar­nail Singh and the Delhi Min­is­ter in charge of Gur­d­wara Elec­tions -Mr Ra­jin­der Pal Gau­tam on 22 July, but no de­ci­sion was an­nounced ei­ther by the Min­is­ter or by the par­tic­i­pat­ing lead­ers.

 

Pan­thak Sewa Dal spokesper­son Hardit Singh Gob­ind­puri, who par­tic­i­pated in the meet­ing with the Di­rec­tor, has among other is­sues, de­manded that the min­utes of all meet­ings of the Di­rec­torate with Sikh lead­ers, when­ever held, must be made pub­lic.

In 2017, the Delhi High Court, while giv­ing per­mis­sion to con­duct elec­tions as per the old voter list had di­rected the Di­rec­torate Gur­d­wara elec­tions to pre­pare photo-based voter lists within 9 months of the elec­tions.

The min­utes of all meet­ings of the Di­rec­torate of Gen­eral Elec­tions with par­tic­i­pat­ing en­ti­ties must be made pub­lic.

Hardit Singh Gob­ind­puri, Spokesper­son, Pan­thak Sewa Dal

Notwith­stand­ing the warn­ing by med­ical and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts, In­dia is run­ning in top gear. It is un­fath­omable that it can­not carry on a re­vi­sion of rolls or even make fresh photo-based voter rolls keep­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing norms in mind -the eas­i­est way of which is to en­sure that more reg­is­tra­tion is done on­line. The Di­rec­torate has been telling the me­dia that there is some glitch in the on­line voter reg­is­tra­tion soft­ware but has not set a date when their prob­lem would be set right.

With a cab­i­net rank min­is­ter Mr Ra­jin­der­pal Gau­tam as in-charge, it should not be a her­culean task for the Aam Aadmi Party to ful­fil its re­spon­si­bil­ity. They owe it to the Sikh pop­u­la­tion of Delhi, what­ever be their po­lit­i­cal stance to­wards Sikhs.

The in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent and of­fice bear­ers of the DS­GMC and for­mer pres­i­dents and of­fice-bear­ers spend a lot of time, money and en­ergy pe­ti­tion­ing courts in Delhi for con­duct or de­lay of elec­tions and cor­rup­tion in the body from time to time. Sadly, the Sikh San­gat in Delhi has not seen any pos­i­tive re­sult of that over the decades.

On a pe­ti­tion by the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal UK-Delhi, the Supreme Court of In­dia or­dered the Di­rec­torate of Gur­d­wara Elec­tions to make photo-iden­tity cards and elec­toral rolls with pho­tos, way back in 2012-13, but the Aam Aadmi Party gov­ern­ment in Delhi did not move an inch. Fur­ther­more, prior to the 2017 gen­eral mem­ber elec­tions to the DS­GMC in 2017, the Delhi High Court passed an or­der in 2016 giv­ing sim­i­lar di­rec­tions for mak­ing photo iden­tity cards and photo rolls. The Di­rec­torate did not take any step.

The Di­rec­torate Gen­eral Elec­tions of the Gov­ern­ment of NCR Delhi, run by the AAP party has ig­nored Supreme Court and Delhi High Court or­ders for prepar­ing photo-based voter cards and lists prior to COVID19 pan­demic. It is an­swer­able to the Sikh res­i­dents of Delhi.

Who is to blame? Is it only the Di­rec­torate of the Delhi gov­ern­ment which should share the en­tire blame? Legally, yes. It is their con­sti­tu­tional re­spon­si­bil­ity to con­duct the elec­tions as per the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Man­age­ment Act, 1971 and rules there­un­der with all amend­ments and di­rec­tions of the courts of the land.

It is also the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the par­ties that par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tions to fol­low up the Di­rec­torate on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and en­sure that they are ap­pro­pri­ately com­ply­ing with their of­fi­cial du­ties as well as court or­ders. The Di­rec­torate of Gen­eral Elec­tions has no one ex­cept it­self to blame to be in the sit­u­a­tion that it is. It is for it­self to come out of the mess to meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of the Sikh res­i­dents of Delhi.

The in­con­ve­nient ques­tions that the Sikh San­gat of Delhi must ask are:

• Why has the Aam Aadmi Party gov­erned Di­rec­torate of Gur­d­wara Elec­tions, work­ing un­der a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter failed to ful­fil its du­ties to pre­pare photo-based voter rolls prior to the COVID19 pan­demic sit­u­a­tion?
• Why have the Sikh rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Aam Aadmi Party not taken up this is­sue within their party and the gov­ern­ment in all se­ri­ous­ness?
• Why did Man­jit Singh GK, Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa and other lead­ers not pres­surise the Di­rec­torate Gur­d­wara Elec­tions to pre­pare the photo-based voter rolls?
• What kind of cor­re­spon­dence was con­ducted be­tween the DS­GMC and the Di­rec­torate to com­ply with court or­ders?
• Who is pay­ing for the hefty le­gal costs of the lawyers of the DS­GMC for their lapses?
• Why is in­vari­ably there a show­down only close to the elec­tion dates?

The Sikh ac­tivists, the Sikh San­gat and every­one who has the in­ter­est of the Panth at heart is also duty-bound to ques­tion both the Di­rec­torate and the DS­GMC lead­er­ship on a con­sis­tent and reg­u­lar ba­sis to en­sure that there is an equal play­ing field for all par­tic­i­pat­ing groups and in­di­vid­u­als and that there is no lapse what­so­ever.

Com­ment­ing upon the lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude of the sober and in­tel­li­gent sec­tions of the com­mu­nity, vet­eran jour­nal­ist Jaswant Singh ‘Ajit’, in one of his re­cent columns has stated, “Some in­tel­lec­tu­als very ca­su­ally de­ride the pre­vail­ing sys­tem of elect­ing Gur­d­wara rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but fail to sug­gest, build or evolve a work­ing and ef­fec­tive al­ter­na­tive. Merely dis­miss­ing the preva­lent sys­tems will not help the com­mu­nity or im­prove the work­ing of the DS­GMC.”

Merely dis­miss­ing the preva­lent sys­tems will not help the com­mu­nity or im­prove the work­ing of the DS­GMC.”

Jaswant Singh 'A­jit', vet­eran Sikh jour­nal­ist in Delhi

A phrase at­trib­uted to Thomas Jef­fer­son -the great apos­tle of hu­man rights goes, “Eter­nal vig­i­lance is the price of lib­erty.” If the Sikh San­gat wants to change for the bet­ter; if the Sikhs de­sire to main­tain the sov­er­eign na­ture of their Gur­d­waras and in­sti­tu­tions; if the Sikhs de­sire that anti-Sikh re­li­gious and re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal prac­tices do not take place at the high­est lev­els; if the Sikh San­gat de­sires that the em­ploy­ees of our re­li­gious and ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions are em­pow­ered, and more, the price has to be paid.

Voter lists of 1983, in­ef­fi­cient Di­rec­torate Gen­eral Elec­tions, par­tic­i­pat­ing groups fur­ther­ing per­sonal whims, po­lit­i­cal goals and anti-Pan­thic agenda -you have it be­fore you. The price of de­mo­c­ra­tic func­tion­ing and re­ju­ve­nat­ing Sikh in­sti­tu­tions is eter­nal vig­i­lance, in­qui­si­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­ter­ven­tion.