Two rivals--Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-- have come on the same platform to welcome the Centre’s decision to do away with the controversial ‘Black List’, comprising 314 Sikh foreign nationals, with only two names of men not connected with Punjab now left on it, but indulges in blame game and another credit war.
Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh welcomed the move to virtually scrap the controversial ‘Black List’, which was “totally discriminatory towards the Sikh community”, by claiming that it came in response to the State Government’s persistent demand and efforts.
On the other hand, SAD president Sukhbir Badal blamed the Congress regimes for creating the “list” claiming that Centre’s decision was the culmination of the efforts of former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the Akali Dal which had been consistently following up this issue with the NDA government.
Capt Amarinder, in his statement, thanked the Central Government for finally conceding the state’s demand for more or less revoking the list, thus making Sikh foreign nationals eligible for availing Visa services to visit their families in India and reconnect with their roots.
“Punjab Government has worked actively with the Centre for scrapping the list, created by the Central Government and its agencies in 2016. Every Sikh had the right to visit Punjab and Darbar Sahib, including those who had gone astray in the surcharged atmosphere of the 80s and 90s, particularly in the wake of the Operation Bluestar and the anti-Sikh riots,” said the Chief Minister.
The Chief Minister said that the Central Government’s decision would go a long way in bringing those members of the Sikh community, who had fled the nation as a result of the circumstances that prevailed in the 80s and the 90s, to connect with their families back home.
The creation of the black list had been a regressive move, which needed to be corrected in the larger interest of the community, whose contribution to the growth and development of India, and the nations in which they were settled, was exemplary, said Capt Amarinder.
“By removing all the 312 Indian-origin Sikhs from the list, the Central Government has accepted the State Government’s reasoning that cutting off the Sikh foreign nationals from their roots would only lead to their further alienation, which would serve no good for the country,” he added.
Expressing gratitude to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for dismantling the ‘black list’, SAD chief said that it was a creation of the Congress party and that the Punjab Congress leaders did not even have the guts to approach their government to get it withdrawn during the 10-year rule of the UPA government at the Centre from 2004 to 2014.
“In direct contrast, Parkash Singh Badal and the SAD has been consistently demanding the list as well as other local black lists prepared by Indian Missions abroad be done away with. Today we are thankful to the PM and the NDA government for meeting the demand of the Sikh community and deleting all 312 names from the official black list maintained by the Foreigners Division of the Home ministry,” he said.
He added that now only two names, which are not related with persons of Punjab origin, only remain in the black list which is “an act of statesmanship and will go a long way in assuaging hurt Sikh feelings and ending the feeling of alienation in the Sikh community”.
SAD president said that this decision as well as another taken earlier this year in April to do away with black lists maintained by Indian Embassies would end the practice of arbitrary denial of visas to Sikhs to visit their near and dear ones in Punjab.
Stating that the facts spoke for themselves, Sukhbir said that he had written a letter to the then Home Minister Rajnath Singh immediately after the NDA came into power in 2014 to do away with the black list. “Following this, Parkash Singh Badal had also written a letter in 2016 as Punjab Chief Minister to remove the names of several Sikhs settled abroad from the secret black list. It was after this that PM intervened and the black list was pruned substantially. As many as 212 names were taken out from the black list following this intervention by the PM,” he added.