While the Badal Dal has nom­i­nated con­spir­acy-to-mur­der ac­cused Dar­bara Singh Guru as its can­di­date for Fate­hgarh Sahib, the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has post­poned the hear­ing of a pe­ti­tion against him and oth­ers to 8 May.  Even­tu­ally, will he go to par­lia­ment or jail?

Tes­t­ing times ahead for the peo­ple of Pun­jab as par­ties an­nounce hu­man rights vi­o­la­tors as can­di­dates.  If the vot­ers in Fate­hgarh Sahib, Ja­land­har and Khadur Sahib want to change the po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive in Pun­jab, they will have to re­build their shrink­ing moral fi­bre and de­nounce those who are hold­ing Pun­jab to ran­som. The ball is in the court of the vot­ers. They will get what they vote for.

De­spite protes­ta­tions and shame slammed on the party in the me­dia and on so­cial me­dia of the pro­posed can­di­date’s al­leged in­volve­ment in the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing of four Sikh youth in Nako­dar in Feb­ru­ary 1986, the Badal Dal, of­fi­cially the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal, has nom­i­nated for­mer bu­reau­crat turned politi­cian and a friend of the Badals –Dar­bara Singh Guru, as its can­di­date for the re­served Fate­hgarh Sahib con­stituency. He will be the of­fi­cial joint can­di­date for the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal and Bharatiya Janta Party.

Speak­ing to me­dia af­ter his nom­i­na­tion, Dar­bara Singh Guru has de­nied any as­so­ci­a­tion with the Nako­dar killings.  He called the cam­paign against him ‘false pro­pa­ganda.’

While the party was an­nounc­ing the can­di­da­ture, the pe­ti­tion filed against Dar­bara Singh Guru and oth­ers was posted for 8 May, as Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Com­mis­sion Re­port is yet to be­come part of the Pun­jab and Haryana High Court record in this case.  In the brief hear­ing in the court to­day, where Baldev Singh, the fa­ther of the one of the killed youth -Ravin­der Singh, was pre­sent, the bench of Jus­tice Ma­habir Singh Sidhu orally ob­served, “be­ing an ex­tremely se­ri­ous mat­ter, the court will also like to see Part II of the In­quiry Com­mis­sion Re­port.”

Who will the vot­ers in Fate­hgarh Sahib vote for may still be a de­ci­sion that they are think­ing about, but who they will not vote for should not be dif­fi­cult to de­cide.  Dar­bara Singh Guru def­i­nitely falls in the sec­ond cat­e­gory.

WSN learns that Part II of the re­port, which con­tains af­fi­davits, an­nex­ures and ar­ti­cles, was not tabled in the Pun­jab As­sem­bly by the then speaker of the Pun­jab As­sem­bly -Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal, when Part I was clan­des­tinely tabled with­out the Ac­tion Taken Re­port, in vi­o­la­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the Com­mis­sions of In­quiry Act.  Cha­ran­jit Singh At­wal and his team has al­ready fum­bled while tak­ing ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing his nom­i­na­tion. He went to the ex­tent of say­ing, “It was long time back, I don’t re­mem­ber it and fol­lowed it with an­other lie that no re­port can be tabled in the House with­out an Ac­tion Taken Re­port.”

If we buy his lie, was the re­port ac­tu­ally tabled in the house? As per the re­sponse re­ceived from the Sec­re­tary Vid­han Sabha by Lud­hi­ana leg­is­la­tor Simar­jit Singh Bains, no dis­cus­sion took place on 5 March 2001 when the re­port was pur­port­edly tabled in the Pun­jab As­sem­bly. WSN fears that it was only en­tered into the records and all law­mak­ers were kept in the dark. Badal Dal in con­spir­acy with the Speaker is ca­pa­ble of this.

How­ever, it may be noted that it is a tra­di­tional prac­tice that only the first part of any com­mis­sion of en­quiry re­port is tabled in the As­sem­bly or the Par­lia­ment as the case may be, while the bulk of the mat­ter and the ma­te­r­ial ev­i­dence, col­lected by any com­mis­sion stays with the re­spec­tive Home de­part­ment.

The lawyer for the vic­tim fam­ily Hari Chand Arora has in­formed that their ap­pli­ca­tion un­der Right to In­for­ma­tion -RTI for Part II of the Jus­tice Gur­nam Singh Re­port still rests with the Home De­part­ment and their re­ply is awaited. It is a pub­lic doc­u­ment and those de­sirous can have ac­cess af­ter seek­ing per­mis­sion. It will be in­ter­est­ing to know how the Home de­part­ment of the Cap­tain Amarinder Singh gov­ern­ment re­sponds to this.

Bibi Paramjit Singh Khalra, wife of mar­tyred hu­man rights de­fender Jaswant Singh Khalra has con­demned the nom­i­na­tion of Dar­bara Singh Guru in a Face­book post.

Who will the vot­ers in Fate­hgarh Sahib vote for may still be a de­ci­sion that they are think­ing about, but who they will not vote for should not be dif­fi­cult to de­cide.  Dar­bara Singh Guru def­i­nitely falls in the sec­ond cat­e­gory.