Joining issues on the SGPC row and batting on behalf of the Congress Government in Haryana, Congress Deputy leader in the lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh on Saturday took strong exception to the Union Home Ministry asking the Haryana Governor to reconsider his assent to the Act passed by the Haryana legislature setting up a separate Gurdwara Managing Committee.
“This act of the Home Ministry was not only unprecedented but amounted to constitutional impropriety,” Capt Amarinder said in a statement issues here. He said it was the matter of Haryana State. Besides, he added, the Section 72 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 gives a clear mandate to Haryana to set up its own SGPC which it has done.
“You don’t order a Governor, who is the constitutional head of the State to withdraw his assent to a law passed by the State legislature”, he stressed, adding, “the Union Home Ministry appears to have breached its brief apparently to mollycoddle Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal who has made it a point of prestige not to allow setting up of a separate body for Haryana Sikhs”.
The former Chief Minister wondered as to why was Badal and the SGPC controlled by him not seeking judicial intervention. “If they think that the Haryana Act is illegal and unconstitutional what stops them from going to the courtIJ” he asked, adding, “or is it because they know that they do not stand any chance in a court of law as the Haryana Act is absolutely legitimate and legal and hence are trying to use extra-judicial pressure and emotional blackmail with the centre to force Haryana to withdraw the law even though it goes against the federal character of our democracy, which Mr Badal has been advocating for last 50 years and is now trying to weaken it.”