M A I N   N E W S

Sikh MPs meet Home Minister
Seek probe into TV report on "Khalistan"
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 9
Peeved by the telecast of a talk show, featuring some leaders of the erstwhile "Khalistan" movement, in a popular TV channel, some Sikh MPs today met Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and sought a probe into what provoked the channel to run the programme almost 15 years after the separatist movement had died.

Led by Rajya Sabha member Tarlochan Singh, the MPs said they feared such TV reports would encourage hostile elements abroad to foment trouble in Punjab again.

“We requested the Home Minister to order an investigation into what was the immediate provocation behind such a news report on an issue which no longer exists in the Sikh mainstream. In fact, such news reports only give a platform to a handful of sidelined and frustrated separatists,” Mr Tarlochan Singh, former chief of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), told The Tribune.

He was accompanied by Punjab MPs Rajmahinder Singh Majitha and Varinder Singh Bajwa.

“We were really perturbed over the fact that the TV channel ran the interview with these kind of disgruntled and frustrated persons and did not think it fit to contact or speak to any political party or Member of Parliament belonging to Punjab... This kind of programme is not only anti-Sikh, anti-Punjab, but also anti-India,” he said.

In a separate move, senior Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee member Manjit Singh, president of Delhi’s Shiromani Akali Dal (Panthak), said he has filed a complaint with the NCM on the news report, he alleged, has portrayed Sikhs as separatists.

“The news story, mostly composed of material dug up from archives, was in fact disparaging to the Sikh community,” he said.

Yesterday also, several Sikh organisations in and outside Punjab, including the SGPC, issued strong reaction on the TV story titled “Desh Droh”, or sedition.