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Pakistan has appointed a non-Sikh as the top executive for the management of the Kartarpur Gurdwara corridor triggering protests from India.
As per official sources, Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) of Pakistan officially constituted the Project Management Unit (PMU) for the corridor and appointed Mohammad Latif as its CEO.
The appointment order, on a contract basis for three years, has been issued by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, Islamabad.
The PMU of the Kartarpur corridor is a self-financing body for the management and maintenance of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib under the administrative control of the ETPB, as approved by the Economic Coordination Committee of the Federal Cabinet on November 3, 2020.
Many in Punjab see this as an attempt to curtail the powers of the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PSGPC), a charge being denied by the Pakistani authorities.
The DSGMC President Manjinder Singh Sirsa took to social media to criticize the appointment. He termed it a highly condemnable move that runs against the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.
Sirsa has written to Dr S Jaishankar, Union Minister of External Affairs seeking his intervention to take up the issue with the Pakistan government to revoke this move. ‘Either a Sikh should be appointed for this post or PSGPC should be given the charge of managing affairs of Kartarpur gurdwara,” he said.
