India has summoned the Pakistani envoy on the issue of Kartarpur Sahib Gurudwara.
New Delhi:
India summoned the Chargé d’Affaires (CDA) of the Pakistan High Commission on Friday and protested vigorously against Islamabad’s decision to transfer management of the Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara from a Sikh body to a separate trust.
MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said Aftab Hassan Khan, the Pakistani CDA, had been emphatically informed that the decision went against the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.
On Thursday, the MEA reacted strongly to Pakistan’s decision to transfer the management and maintenance of the gurudwara from the Pakistani Sikh Gurudwara Prabhandhak Committee to the administrative control of the Evacuee Trust Property Board, a non-Sikh body.
Mr. Rivastava said Pakistan’s unilateral move is highly condemnable and goes against the spirit of the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor initiative as well as the religious sentiments of the Sikh community as a whole.
Amid heightened tension between the two countries, the corridor from Dera Baba Sahib in Gurdaspur in India to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan was opened in November, as part of a historic people-to-people initiative.
Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located in Pakistani Narowal district across the Ravi River, about four kilometers from Dera Baba Nanak Shrine.
It is the final resting place of the founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak Dev, who had spent the last 18 years of his life in Kartarpur.
Relations between the two countries collapsed after India abolished the special status of Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019 and branched off into two Union territories.
The corridor was closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
