Del­hi’s poor Sik­li­gar Sikhs have not put much ef­fort and in­ter­est in the Delhi Sikh Gur­d­wara Elec­tions. Clearly, the Sik­li­gar Sikhs and other poor Sikhs of Delhi need guid­ance and sup­port to en­rol as vot­ers and to en­sure that they are not de­ceived by any­one in their name.  WSN in­vites so­cially-minded Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions to arrange aware­ness pro­grams amongst Sik­li­gars, Lubanas, Baath com­mu­ni­ties as has been hap­pen­ing over the decades.

SIK­LI­GAR AC­TIVISTS AROUND EIGHT MA­JOR DE­RAS OF SIK­LI­GARS IN DELHI are do­ing pre­cious lit­tle for reg­is­tra­tion of votes for DS­GMC elec­tions since the process started two weeks ago. In the past elec­tions, Sik­li­gar ma­jor­ity ar­eas of Tilak Vi­har, Kalyan­puri, Man­golpuri and Sul­tan­puri have had sub­stan­tial num­bers of Sik­li­gar votes.

It is sig­nif­i­cant to note that these are the very ar­eas where a large num­ber of the poor Sik­li­gars were killed in a planned and sys­tem­atic man­ner in the No­vem­ber 1984 pogrom.

Talk­ing on the phone line with this re­porter, Ravin­der Singh from Tilak Vi­har said, “We are fac­ing many prob­lems. Our DS­GMC mem­ber Atma Singh Lubana does not care for our needs. He ig­nores us. He has done vir­tu­ally noth­ing for the poor Sikhs as DS­GMC mem­ber.”

“We are fac­ing many prob­lems. Our DS­GMC mem­ber Atma Singh Lubana does not care for our needs. He ig­nores us. He has done vir­tu­ally noth­ing for the poor Sikhs as DS­GMC mem­ber.”

“We have a lot of prob­lems -chal­lenges of caste doc­u­men­ta­tion, set­ting up of help desks for voter reg­is­tra­tion and com­plet­ing our reg­u­lar ID pa­pers,” he added.

Apart from the prob­lems of voter reg­is­tra­tion, young Sik­li­gar boys are fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment, which has be­come acute due to COVID19 pan­demic. With mas­sive un­em­ploy­ment, it has be­come more dif­fi­cult to con­vince the Sik­li­gar, Lubanas, Bhaats and other poor com­mu­ni­ties to be part of the DS­GMC elec­tion process.

Though the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal Delhi and the Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal are ac­tive in Sul­tan­puri and Kalyan­puri, here too the Sik­li­gars are di­vided into groups and there is no ef­fort to en­rol all el­i­gi­ble Sikh men and women, in­clud­ing young­sters as vot­ers.

This re­porter has ob­served that no Sikh re­li­gious or so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion has made ef­forts to launch an aware­ness cam­paign for these poor Sik­li­gar Sikhs for DS­GMC voter reg­is­tra­tion. Many in the Sik­li­gar, Lubanas and Bhaat com­mu­ni­ties do not know the mean­ing of Form 4, 5 and 6. For them to reg­is­ter on­line is al­most an im­pos­si­bil­ity, given their il­lit­er­acy.

Gur­d­wara com­mit­tees have not done much to solve the prob­lems that this poor sec­tion of the Sikh pop­u­la­tion faces in the cap­i­tal re­gion of Delhi.

Even Gur­d­wara com­mit­tees have not done much to solve the prob­lems that this poor sec­tion of the Sikh pop­u­la­tion faces in the cap­i­tal re­gion of Delhi.

Young Sik­li­gar stu­dent Ka­mal­jeet Singh, who has been mon­i­tor­ing the Sik­li­gar scene in north­ern In­dia for the last many years, had the last word, “Sik­li­gars in Delhi are not given im­por­tance by the Gur­d­wara lead­ers, ex­cept dur­ing the elec­tions. Af­ter elec­tions, the Sik­li­gars are for­got­ten by the par­ties and also by the can­di­dates who get elected.”

“Our own com­mu­nity is in deep slum­ber. They need to wake up. I know that we have to fight this bat­tle our­selves. How­ever, if we get some sup­port from any quar­ter, it will be a big leap for the poor Sik­li­gar com­mu­nity, in Delhi and every­where else,”