Photo Source: Babushahi Bureau
Dal Khalsa to boycott Lok Sabha polls
Babushahi Bureau
Amritsar, May 1, 2024: Asserting that the Indian democratic system was not conducive to attaining a sovereign Punjab by participating in the current electoral processes, the Dal Khalsa resolved to stay away from the upcoming Lok Sabha elections to be held on June 1 in Punjab.
Presenting its viewpoint on LS elections, the Dal Khalsa working president Paramjit Singh Mand released the party's no-election policy document signed by the party's fifteen-member executive committee led by Harpal Singh Cheema declaring elections can't be the substitute for the right to self-determination. These elections cannot solve the Sikh problem nor change the Sikh position.
While addressing the press conference, Mand said the solution to the Punjab dispute lies in a plebiscite under the UN and not elections under Indian dispensation. Dal Khalsa's leader categorically affirmed that they are neither against democracy nor a democratic system. The organization envisages an arrangement like Quebec in Canada and Scotland in the United Kingdom, wherein it is possible to make the right to self-determination an election agenda, subsequently leading to the right to secede.
Mand addressing the press conference further said the Sikh aspirations and lives were too dear to be sacrificed at the altar of such a game of elections where money, liquor, drugs, and even caste and class are key factors.
"The Hindutva govt in India refuses to release the Sikh political prisoners who have completed their jail terms including the ones who have been behind bars since 1995 in the Beant Singh assassination case. On the contrary, they had fielded the grandson of a tyrant ruler from the Ludhiana seat to convey to Sikhs that their agenda is identical with Congress,' stated Mand.
"In the recent past, we have lost three prominent Sikh brethren Bhai Paramjit Singh Panjwar, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Avtar Singh Kanda. They were assassinated by Indian agents on foreign shores only because of their political beliefs and ideology. The country, which is hell-bent to crush our aspirations and silence our voices through extrajudicial means, how can we strengthen its so-called democratic credentials by participating in the election process, they questioned?
Punjab has witnessed endless preventive detentions under draconian laws like TADA (now repealed), UAPA, and NSA, thousands of arrests, torture, involuntary disappearances, extra-judicial killings, and even death sentences and executions under repealed laws constitute the vast array of gross human rights violation of the Sikh population in Punjab. The litany of broken promises and injustices is endless. This long story has rendered us homeless, hapless, and hopeless. How does one see any hope in elections?" he added.