Peo­ples’ man and two-time SGPC mem­ber Sur­jit Singh Kal­ab­ula passed away to­day af­ter a brief ill­ness, caus­ing a set­back to the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar).

Sur­jit Singh Kal­ab­ula, two-time mem­ber of the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee, elected from Dhuri con­stituency as a nom­i­nee of the Sim­ran­jit Singh Mann-led Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal (Am­rit­sar) passed away to­day evening af­ter a brief bout of pneu­mo­nia. He is sur­vived by his wife and two mar­ried chil­dren.

55-year-old Jathedar Sur­jit Singh, gen­eral sec­re­tary and PAC mem­ber of the party was an en­dear­ing per­son­al­ity and hon­est to the core. Though his party did not have an over­whelm­ing pres­ence in the SGPC, he made his way to the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the SGPC un­der erst­while Pres­i­dent Prof. Kir­pal Singh Ban­dun­gar.

“Sur­jit Singh Kal­ab­ula en­abled many needy peo­ple to join the SGPC rank and fine. He was in­stru­men­tal in en­sur­ing grants to hun­dreds of can­cer pa­tient fam­i­lies un­der the SGPC scheme for as­sist­ing can­cer pa­tients. He set up li­braries in many Gur­d­waras and vil­lage com­mu­nity cen­tres of his con­stituency Dhuri.”

A peo­ple’s man, he en­abled many needy peo­ple to join the SGPC rank and fine since he was elected in 2004. He was in­stru­men­tal in en­sur­ing grants to hun­dreds of can­cer pa­tient fam­i­lies un­der the SGPC scheme for as­sist­ing can­cer pa­tients. He set up li­braries in many Gur­d­waras and vil­lage com­mu­nity cen­tres of his con­stituency Dhuri. 

Ded­i­cated to the wel­fare of the Sikh com­mu­nity, he trav­elled the length and breadth of not only his own con­stituency but was a leader re­spected all over San­grur dis­trict and the Pun­jab. He had the old Akali spirit in him and “was never at home.” He wan­dered from one vil­lage to an­other do­ing “Dharam Par­char”, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of drug abuse vic­tims and re­solv­ing per­sonal and com­mu­nity dis­putes. 

Speak­ing to the World Sikh News, party leader Gur­naib Singh Sarpanch from San­grur said, “It is a great loss to San­grur and the party.  He was a gen­tle­man politi­cian fully ded­i­cated to the poor and the needy.”

His fa­ther Jaswant Singh was a lead­ing po­lit­i­cal per­son­al­ity of his times. An as­so­ci­ate of for­mer party stal­wart, late Prof. Sukhjin­der Singh from San­grur, the ever hard-work­ing and de­vout Sur­jit Singh Kal­ab­ula was fully com­mit­ted to the idea of Sikh na­tion­al­ism. He would in­vari­ably en­gage with this writer in per­son and on phone to dis­cuss mech­a­nisms to over­haul the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sys­tems of the SGPC.

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When I met him last a cou­ple of weeks back, he dis­cussed in de­tail how to pass the ba­ton of Sikh po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism to the next gen­er­a­tion. Sadly, the mo­ment for him came too soon. May Akalpu­rakh bless him!