Administration stops reconstruction work at Sikh warrior Jassa Singh Ramgarhia's house

Ravi Dhaliwal

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Gurdaspur, May 22

The Ramgarhia Sikh Heritage Trust which had been reconstructing the ancestral house of famous 18th century Sikh warrior Jassa Singh Ramgarhia has come under a cloud after reports surfaced that instead of preserving the dilapidated structure, the Trust was actually in the process of razing it to the ground.

Deputy Commissioner (DC) Himanshu Aggarwal has ordered the ongoing work to be stopped.

“Let them show proper documents, only then can they proceed. I have also asked the Batala SDM to conduct a probe,” he said.

Jassa Singh was a prominent Sikh leader and was widely considered to be one of the most powerful Sikh generals of his time. He remained the chief of the Ramgarhia clan, also known as ‘Misl’ in local parlance.

On April, 8,2015, the then Union minister Vijay Sampla had inaugurated the “renovation and conservation work” as stated on the foundation stone. It went on in bits and pieces before it had to be stopped due to the Covid outbreak. Once the pandemic was over, work restarted but could never pick up pace.

On May 5, during the 300th birth anniversary celebrations of Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, a Good Samaritan Inderjit Singh Hapura led a delegation of school-children for a tour of the ancestral house. “However, instead of being engrossed in renovation, the Trust had actually pulled down a part of the structure,” he said.

DC Himanshu Aggarwal was promptly informed. He, in turn, asked the Naib Tehsidar to visit the site and also ordered him to stop the work. In the meantime, he ordered an inquiry to be conducted by Batala SDM Shayari Bhandari.

The house had been built on a large area but following encroachments of various kinds over the last few decades, the total area has now been reduced to just a few hundred square yards.

Inderjit Singh Hapura said that on several earlier occasions too he had come to know that the Trust was overstepping its jurisdiction. “Every time I challenged them, they would tell me that they had the requisite documents,” he remarked.

“Something is definitely wrong somewhere. It is good that the DC has now intervened. Ramgarhia was our leader and we will not allow anybody to defame him,” he said.