Harcharanjit Singh Dhami

Harcharanjit Singh Dhami is a senior leader of Dal Khalsa, the Amritsar-based organisation that campaigns for Sikh sovereignty. He is not the SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami. SikhNet reported in 2008 that he was 55, an industrialist from Hoshiarpur district with an MSc from DAV College, Jalandhar (1975), who joined Dal Khalsa in 2003 after reading the poetry of its founder Gajinder Singh.

Key moments

• 26 January 2005: the Sarkar-e-Khalsa flag was hoisted at Amritsar. He and Kanwarpal Singh were among those booked at Islamabad police station, Amritsar, under sections 153-B, 124-A (sedition) and 120-B. The Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the charges on 20 October 2009, almost five years later.
• 8 August 2008: elected president at Gurdwara Akalgarh, Amritsar, for a two-year term, proposed by the outgoing president Satnam Singh and approved unanimously by about 110 delegates.
• June 2012: a man named as H S Dhami, head of the organisation, wrote the editorial message in the third edition of the June 1984 Martyrs' Directory. He called it a humble contribution to record the "unknown and unsung heroes" and described the 1984 attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib, Operation Bluestar, as "the saga of unparalleled chivalry of the Sikhs".
• November 2014: Dal Khalsa gave a memorandum to the United Nations asking for an inquiry into the Indian state's role in the November 1984 killings of Sikhs. The Tribune quotes him as president saying the group did not approach the government because it had done nothing to give justice in thirty years.
• Mid-September 2015: he signed an in-principle unity document with Kulbeer Singh Barapind of Panch Pardhani. On 20 May 2016 the two bodies announced a merger under the name Dal Khalsa, with Harpal Singh Cheema as working president.
• 13 August 2018: at Dal Khalsa's fortieth foundation day, described as a senior leader, he said "Our doubts regarding the feasibility and possibility of the referendum remain", speaking of the 2020 referendum plan, and warned it would be a fiasco unless misgivings were addressed.
• January 2021: described as former head of Dal Khalsa, he urged farmers entering Delhi on 26 January to keep the peace.
• 5 July 2024: with Kanwarpal Singh, Paramjit Singh Mand and Jasveer Singh Khandur he told the press in Amritsar that Gajinder Singh had died on 3 July.

Remembered for: leading Dal Khalsa through the years of the 1984 justice campaign and its merger with Panch Pardhani. The reports found do not say exactly when his presidency ended, and no 2024 report names him in an office.