LAHORE: Elders of the Sikh community on Saturday criticised the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) for selling the land attached with Gurdwara Chuna Mandi of Guru Ram Das Jee without their consent.
Talking to The Express Tribune at the concluding ceremony of Guru Ram Das’ 476th birth anniversary, Sardar Sham Singh, the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Perbandhak Committee (PSGPC) president, said that the ETPB had sold the land attached to the holy places.
The land included a dewan khana spread over 12-marla and 7-foot area and a dharamshala spread over 12-marla and 200-foot at Gurdwara Chuna Mandi of Guru Ram Das Jee and a 12-marla and 100-foot land of Gurdwara Khuda Baksh Singh, adjacent to Gurdwara Chuna Mandi.
Sham Singh said that after they protested the ETPB issued a letter saying that the dewankhana land would be returned to the Sikh community. But the buyer, he said, had already started constructing a plaza on the site and refused to return land. Sham Singh added that the ETPB had failed to enforce its new notification.
He said that he and the former PSGPC presidents were agitating against the ETPB for seven months now but their complaints had so far fallen on deaf ears. “They say we have bought the land at a very high price and cannot vacate it without being compensated,” said Bishan Singh, a former PSGPC president. He said that the land was sold by the ETPB at Rs100,000 per square foot.
Faraz Abbas, the ETPB deputy administrator (Shrines), said that the Board has issued a notification for handing over the dewankhana land. He said that the ETPB would very soon call a meeting to discuss how to acquire possession of the land from the current owners. The meeting, Abbas said, would be called when the ETPB chairman, Syed Asif Hashmi, returns from his foreign tour.
Dr Swarn Singh, a former PSGPC president, said that the ETPB should also invite representatives of the Sikh community to the meeting.
Sardar Mastan Singh, another former PSGPC president, said that the government had not issued visas to the pilgrims from India for Guru Ram Das’s anniversary celebrations to avoid an outcry against the selling of lands. Bishan Singh alleged that the ETPB barred even some local Sikhs from attending the festival and did not invite the media. He said that for now the Sikh Sangat was only warning the ETPB, if such injustice continued it would hold press conferences and issue white papers against the board. Sham Singh said he would soon call a meeting of Sikhs from across the country to devise a strategy to deal with the issue.
The land, he said, was sacred as the fourth guru, Guru Ram Das, wrote Guru Granth (Sikhs community’s religious book) over there.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 10th, 2010.
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