To save her­itage in Pak­istan, Global Sikh Coun­cil to work with ETPB Board

Global Sikh Coun­cil leader Dr Kan­waljit Kaur from Lon­don vis­ited Pak­istan last month as part of a del­e­ga­tion for the first In­ter­na­tional Sikh Con­ven­tion in La­hore. She availed the op­por­tu­nity to meet the ETPB Board that man­ages Sikh shrines with PS­GPC, to ap­prise them of Sikh con­cerns re­gard­ing the preser­va­tion of Sikh her­itage in Pak­istan.

LADY SINGH KAN­WALJIT KAUR and the Her­itage Com­mit­tee In­charge of the Global Sikh Coun­cil -Yash­pal Singh met the of­fi­cials of the Evac­uee Trust Prop­erty Board of­fi­cials Muham­mad Tariq and Im­ran Khan and dis­cussed ways and mech­a­nisms for preser­va­tion of our her­itage for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. The ETPB Board, also known as the Aukaf Board along with the Pak­istan Sikh Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee man­ages var­i­ous Gur­d­waras and his­tor­i­cal sites of the Sikhs in the Is­lamic Re­pub­lic of Pak­istan.

The GSC del­e­ga­tion sought the sup­port of the ETPB of­fi­cials in tak­ing per­sonal in­ter­est to re­solve the land dis­pute of Gur­d­wara Biba Sahib in Pe­shawar, as some un­scrupu­lous el­e­ments have claimed own­er­ship of the Gur­d­wara land and the Sikhs of Pe­shawar are keen that their right­ful due is given to them. Kan­waljit Kaur told the of­fi­cials that “an early res­o­lu­tion of the sit­u­a­tion there will en­sure more cor­dial­ity be­tween the two com­mu­ni­ties, which have been strained for some time.”

GSC Her­itage Com­mit­tee in-charge Yash­pal Singh re­quested the Aukaf Board, to share in­for­ma­tion with the Global Sikh Coun­cil and other Di­as­pora bod­ies re­gard­ing the open­ing, ren­o­va­tion and main­te­nance of Gur­d­waras and Sikh in­sti­tu­tions in Pak­istan in or­der that such in­for­ma­tion is widely cir­cu­lated and mis­in­for­ma­tion is cur­tailed.

Speak­ing to the World Sikh News, Kan­waljit Kaur said, “The Global Sikh Coun­cil has been made an ad­vi­sory mem­ber of the ETPB Board. We have of­fered sup­port from the GSC to the ETPB Board and hope to work closely with them in the fu­ture.”