Bhai Balwinder Singh Jatana

Bhai Balwinder Singh Jatana, also spelled Jattana, was a Singh of the Babbar Khalsa. He is remembered in Punjab as the man who stopped construction of the Sutlej Yamuna Link canal, and in October 2022 the SGPC installed his portrait in the Central Sikh Museum at Sri Harmandir Sahib.

The canal was meant to carry Ravi and Beas water from Punjab to Haryana. Indira Gandhi broke ground for it at Kapoori on 8 April 1982, and work on it stopped in July 1990.

Key moments

• July 1990: Jatana and other Babbar Khalsa Singhs are reported to have shot dead the canal project's chief engineer, M. L. Sikri, and its superintending engineer, Avtar Singh Aulakh, at the SYL office in Chandigarh. The spellings and initials vary between reports, and The Tribune gives the two men's ranks the other way round. Construction was halted after the killings.
• 4 September 1991: he was killed in a police encounter, about a year after the engineers.
• 23 June 2022: Sidhu Moose Wala's posthumous song "SYL" praised him for his part in halting the canal. YouTube blocked it in India within days, the reason was not stated, and the Punjab Assembly condemned the block on 28 June.
• 6 July 2022: the SGPC executive announced it would display his photograph at the Central Sikh Museum. Kanwar Pal Singh of Dal Khalsa said he had submitted a memorandum asking for it. Critics, among them Malvinder Singh Mali, charged the Shiromani Akali Dal with double standards.
• 15 October 2022: the portrait was unveiled. The SGPC president, Harjinder Singh Dhami, called him a protector of Punjab's waters who opposed the canal fiercely regardless of his life, and said the museum keeps the memory of those who sacrificed for the community.

What he is remembered for: stopping the canal. The SGPC's president called him a protector of Punjab's waters, and his portrait now hangs in the museum beside the Darbar Sahib. The canal remained unfinished: the Supreme Court told Punjab in 2002 to complete it, and in November 2016 gave its opinion that Punjab's 2004 law cancelling its water agreements was illegal, according to Wikipedia's account of the dispute. The Wire, Outlook and Editorji call him a "militant" and report that he killed the two engineers, and the honour paid to him in 2022 was criticised by some, as noted above.