Cit­ing per­sonal rea­sons, Takht Ha­ri­man­dar Ji Patna Sa­heb Com­mit­tee Pres­i­dent Jagjot Singh Sohi, Gen­eral Sec­re­tary In­dar­jeet Singh, and Su­per­in­ten­dent Daljit Singh failed to ap­pear to­day 5 De­cem­ber 2023, be­fore the Akal Takht ap­pointed En­quiry Panel to ex­plain their con­duct about forcibly re­mov­ing Sikh San­gat from the Dar­bar Sa­heb at Patna Sahib dur­ing the visit of the In­dian Pres­i­dent Drau­padi Murmu to the birth­place of Guru Gob­ind Singh -Takht Patna Sa­heb, some two months ago. WSN Re­ports.

While an at­tempt was made to keep the whole episode of the trio of the Pres­i­dent-Gen­eral Sec­re­tary-Su­per­in­ten­dent of Takht Patna Sa­heb be­ing sum­moned to Akal Takht un­der the wraps, it is now pub­lic knowl­edge that they have once again dodged the is­sue on per­sonal pre­texts. WSN has learned that they were to ap­pear be­fore the Com­mit­tee but till the last hours, they did not turn up and had sub­mit­ted per­sonal rea­sons for non-at­ten­dance.

Ear­lier too, in re­sponse to the sum­mons of the Akal Takht sent on 23 Oc­to­ber, the Jathedar through his as­sis­tant had sought an ex­pla­na­tion. The Akal Takht let­ter had said, “We have re­ceived writ­ten com­plaints and videos from the San­gat stat­ing that on the evening of 18-10-2023, dur­ing the visit of the Pres­i­dent of In­dia to Takht Sri Har­mandir Ji Patna Sahib, the San­gat pre­sent in the Dar­bar Hall of Takht Sahib were ex­pelled from Dar­bar Sahib and mis­treated. Fur­ther­more, a sep­a­rate throne-like area was cre­ated in­side the Dar­bar Sahib for the seat­ing of the Pres­i­dent, con­sti­tut­ing a se­vere vi­o­la­tion of Maryada.”

The let­ter sought a writ­ten clar­i­fi­ca­tion within a week.

The ag­i­tated Sikh San­gat of Patna had sent in de­tailed sub­mis­sions to the Jathedar Akal Takht re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent and had urged the Akal Takht Jathedar to make im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure that such vi­o­la­tion of Maryada and dis­re­spect of San­gat does not hap­pen again at Takht Patna Sa­heb or any other his­tor­i­cal Gur­d­wara or any Gur­d­wara what­so­ever.”

Watch­dog body The Sikh Col­lec­tive had also ap­pealed to Jathedar Akal Takht to take se­ri­ous note of this vi­o­la­tion of Sikh tra­di­tions in Gur­d­wara man­age­ment.

A mem­ber of the Sikh San­gat Iqbal Singh Lucky Bagga speak­ing to the World Sikh News said, “We know that the ex­cuses of­fered are plain lies. This Com­mit­tee is a bunch of liars. How­ever, we are sat­is­fied that the Akal Takht Sa­heb has taken note of this di­gres­sion of Maryada and we hope that the Sikh au­thor­i­ties will take this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion.”

“We know that the ex­cuses of­fered are plain lies. This Com­mit­tee is a bunch of liars. How­ever, we are sat­is­fied that the Akal Takht Sa­heb has taken note of this di­gres­sion of Maryada and we hope that the Sikh au­thor­i­ties will take this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion.”

Iqbal Singh Lucky Bagga, Mem­ber, Sikh San­gat, Patna

“While so many days have passed by, we are still hurt by what hap­pened when the In­dian Pres­i­dent vis­ited Takht Patna Sa­heb.”

Sig­nif­i­cantly the writ­ten sub­mis­sion of the Takht Patna Sa­heb Com­mit­tee Pres­i­dent and Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of­fered barely any ex­pla­na­tion and an at­tempt was made to put the en­tire blame onto the Su­per­in­ten­dent Daljit Singh’s mis­con­duct.

Jas­pal Singh, per­sonal as­sis­tant to Jathedar Akal Takht Gi­ani Ragh­bir Singh, while speak­ing to this cor­re­spon­dent con­firmed the non-at­ten­dance of the of­fice-bear­ers from Patna and in­formed that “a new date will be given to them for their ap­pear­ance at Akal Takht Sa­heb.”