LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Punjab’s Minister for Minority Affairs, Ramesh Singh Arora, has invited Indian Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and the entire Indian Punjab Assembly to visit Pakistan, days after Mann said he wanted to attend a Punjabi conference in Lahore but doubted New Delhi would let him go.
“Sardar Bhagwant Singh Mann, we salute you. You had stated on the floor of the Assembly that you wish to visit Pakistan,” said Arora, who is Pakistan’s first Sikh provincial minister and chairs the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. “I do not know whether the Government of India will allow him to travel to Pakistan.”
“I invite the entire Punjab Assembly to Pakistan, not only to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur,” he added, saying Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz would welcome the Indian chief minister.
Pakistani Sikh Minister responds to Indian Sikh Minister — Murtaza Ali Shah (@murtazaviews) on Instagram
A conference in Lahore
On October 23, Mann told the Indian Punjab Assembly that he wanted to accept an invitation to the fourth International Punjabi Conference, to be held in Lahore from November 27 to 29. “I also want to go, because our roots are one, our problems are also similar,” he said.
But he doubted that India’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government would clear the trip. “They do not even let me go to France or Japan. How will they let me go to Pakistan?” Mann said. Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan replied that if Mann got permission, he should take the House along.
Kartarpur and interfaith harmony
Arora described Pakistan as a country of peace and interfaith harmony, where Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians are equal citizens under the Constitution, and offered Indian lawmakers visits to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur and the holy sites of other faiths. He said he had cordial ties with Speaker Sandhwan.
Mann has also called for the Kartarpur Corridor, which lets Sikh pilgrims from India visit one of their holiest shrines without a visa, to be reopened. Any visit would depend on travel and diplomatic clearances from New Delhi, and relations between the two countries remain strained after last year’s four-day military conflict.
