Haryana's separate gurdwara committee: the 2014 standoff with the SGPC and Akal Takht

Who: Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's Haryana Government; Finance Minister Harmohinder Singh Chattha; Jagdish Singh Jhinda and Didar Singh Nalwi of the ad hoc committee; the SGPC and the Shiromani Akali Dal; and Akal Takht Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh.

What: On 11 July 2014 the Haryana Assembly passed the Haryana Sikh Gurdwaras (Management) Bill (The Peninsula). It created a separate body for the state's gurdwaras, which the Amritsar-based SGPC then ran. The Akali Dal and SGPC held that the bill had to go to the Centre, while Haryana said it needed only the Governor's assent (The Tribune, 10 July), and by 14 July Governor Jagannath Pahadia had consented. SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar warned Haryana's Sikhs against falling for a Congress plot to divide the community.

On 16 July the Akal Takht moved to excommunicate Haryana's finance minister Harmohinder Singh Chattha and the committee leaders Jagdish Singh Jhinda and Didar Singh Nalwi, for conspiring to divide the SGPC, The Tribune reported. Dal Khalsa called the edict unprincipled and unacceptable, and former Jathedars Joginder Singh Vedanti and Giani Bhagwan Singh said it had been rushed and was political. Bhai Mohkam Singh of the United Sikh Forum led a delegation to Jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh to ask him to take the decision back, noting that Jhinda and Nalwi had not signed the Act.

On 22 July The Tribune found SGPC task forces holding gurdwaras in Haryana and about 500 nihangs and supporters camped at Gurdwara Chhati Patshahi, Kurukshetra. On 25 July it reported a war of banners, and SGPC members, 15 Akali MLAs, sitting and former, and nihangs deployed at Nada Sahib near Panchkula. Jhinda, an ad hoc member of the new committee, warned that a minor mistake by either side could snowball into a major controversy. The ad hoc Haryana committee (HSGPC, later HSGMC) asked the Akal Takht for a hukamnama against the morcha the Akali Dal proposed to launch in Haryana. On 6 August Zee News reported that the dispute over a Kurukshetra gurdwara turned violent when SGPC and HSGMC supporters clashed.

Where: The standoff played out across Haryana, at Kurukshetra, Nada Sahib near Panchkula, Karnal and Ambala.

Why it mattered: The SGPC held that the Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1925, put Haryana's shrines under it, while a Haryana cabinet sub-committee held that the state could form its own body. The courts decided it: on 20 September 2022 the Supreme Court upheld the Act, holding that the state legislature was competent and that Articles 25 and 26 were not violated (LiveLaw). On 4 October 2022 the SGPC, led by its president Harjinder Singh Dhami, marched in Amritsar to the Deputy Commissioner's office against the ruling.