“Honour Sukhbir Badal’s Attacker”: Union Minister’s Dig At Akali Dal, Leader Responds

Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu has suggested the Shiromani Akali Dal should honour the man who shot at Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal since he himself had accepted he committed sacrilege, due to which the former Punjab deputy chief minister had to serve penance.

Mr Bittu in a swipe at the Akali Dal also suggested the party’s general secretary Bikram Singh Majithia should embrace Narain Singh Chaura, the man who shot at Mr Badal, “in the same way Majithia had embraced Beant Singh’s killers.”

Mr Bittu alleged the Akali Dal sympathised with terrorists, “but terrorists are not loyal to anyone.”

“Shiromani Akali Dal should show respect to Narain Singh Chaura. I appeal to the Jathedar to honour Narain Singh Chaura by putting his picture in the museum built next to the Akal Takht Sahib,” Mr Bittu, the Union Minister of State for Railway and Food Processing Industries, told reporters.

Former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, who was from the Congress, was assassinated by a suicide bomber in August 1995.

“When Sukhbir Singh Badal himself accepted the sacrilege, Narain Singh got emotional and fired at him, which missed and hit a wall. Narain Singh is a gem of the nation…” Mr Bittu said, adding Narain Singh fired at Sukhbir Badal “in the spirit of the Guru”, and so no case should be filed against him.

“If a case is filed, all expenses of the case should be paid to the SGPC and Narain Singh should be acquitted,” Mr Bittu said, in an apparent swipe at the Akali Dal.

Responding to the Union minister’s swipe, Bikram Singh Majithia said Mr Bittu and the BJP have a lot to answer for “validating the attack” on the former deputy chief minister.

“… On December 4, he (Mr Bittu) condemned the attack outside the parliament and now he has validated the attack. The BJP has a lot to answer. Why is their minister justifying an attack inside a gurdwara? Does the BJP support the ideology of Narain Singh Chaura because he is a sleeper cell of the ISI? RDX and an AK-47 rifle have been recovered from his house…”

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Mr Badal, 62, was shot at while serving penance ordered by the Akal Takht, the Sikhs’ highest temporal body. He had been found guilty of religious misconduct when the Akalis were in power in Punjab, from 2007 to 2017, and declared a ‘tankhaiya’, or one guilty of religious misconduct.

He was sentenced to serve food and clean dishes and toilets in gurdwaras, including the Golden Temple, and began his first day as a ‘sevadar’ on Tuesday. Dressed in blue, he sat in a wheelchair, with a plaque around his neck and a spear in hand, and his first act of contrition was washing vessels. That day passed uneventfully.

However, on Wednesday, former Khalistaini terrorist Narain Singh opened fire from a close range at Sukhbir Badal at the main gate of the Sikh shrine. He missed, and plainclothes policemen overpowered him.