Sedition FIR names 20 organisers; SGPC voids resolutions

Who: The organisers of the November 10, 2015, Sarbat Khalsa, Simranjit Singh Mann of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and Mohkam Singh of the United Akali Dal; 20 people booked by Amritsar (Rural) police; SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar; and the Badal government in Punjab.

What: The SGPC refused to let the Sarbat Khalsa meet at the Manji Sahib in the Golden Temple complex, saying only the Akal Takht Jathedar could call one, so it met at Chabba village on the Amritsar to Tarn Taran road. The Tribune reports more than a lakh people; SikhNet says estimates run to hundreds of thousands. It passed 13 resolutions. It named Jagtar Singh Hawara, a convict in the Beant Singh assassination case, acting Akal Takht Jathedar, with Dhian Singh Mand to officiate in his absence, and appointed Amrik Singh Ajnala and Baljit Singh Daduwal as heads of Takht Keshgarh Sahib and Takht Damdama Sahib, all until April 13, 2016. It also stripped Parkash Singh Badal of his 2011 title and nullified Makkar's "Shiromani Sewak" title.

Makkar answered that the resolutions "stand null and void principally", and that the appointment, removal, duties and tenure of jathedars are well defined in the Gurdwaras Act of 1925, with the SGPC given full rights to run that framework. Punjab Police booked 20 people at Chatiwind police station in Amritsar (Rural) under IPC sections 124-A (sedition), 153-A, 153-B and 120-B, section 13(1) of the UAPA and section 66-F of the IT Act. Mann and Mohkam Singh were named. The case was annulled in 2018 after the Justice Mehtab Singh Gill Commission recommended it, The Tribune reports.

Where: Chabba village near Amritsar, with the FIR registered at Chatiwind police station.

Why it mattered: The Punjab government argued the gathering was not convened through the Akal Takht and lacked the Panj Piare's approval. Critics inside the Panth, such as Amandeep Sandhu in The Caravan, said the resolutions looked pre-drafted and that naming Hawara served radical interests, while Sandhu also wrote that Sikh tradition gives a Sarbat Khalsa the means to revoke institutional leadership. The state used a sedition charge and the SGPC used a statute, and neither accepted the gathering's authority.