Dr Bhagat Singh, Akali Dal leader

Dr Bhagat Singh was an Akali Dal leader of the early 1970s. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism names Dr Bhagat Singh as one of the twelve members of the sub-committee that drafted the policy programme later known as the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. It says the Shiromani Akali Dal appointed the sub-committee on 11 December 1972, after the party won only 24 seats in the Punjab Assembly elections of March 1972. Among the other members it names are Surjit Singh Barnala, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, Jiwan Singh Umranangal, Gian Singh Rarewala, Prem Singh Lalpura and Major General Gurbakhsh Singh of Badhani.

The Encyclopaedia says the committee met first at Amritsar, then at Chandigarh, and finished its work in ten successive meetings with the counsel of Sardar Kapur Singh. The Working Committee of the Akali Dal adopted the document unanimously at Anandpur Sahib on 16 and 17 October 1973.

His own version

Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles says three versions of the 1973 resolution were in circulation: one identified with Kapur Singh, one projected by "Dr. Bhagat Singh, M.L.A. of the Akali Dal (Talwandi)", and the Akali Dal's official version, printed and circulated by Giani Ajmer Singh, the party's secretary. Gurmit Singh writes that Dr Bhagat Singh seems to have borrowed mainly from Kapur Singh's version but added areas he wanted merged into Punjab: Paonta Sahib, the Dehra Dun valley and the Terai area of Uttar Pradesh.

The sources opened for this page say nothing about his early life, his constituency or his later career.