From Slurs to Silence: Sikh Community Stands Firm in Kolkata Dharna
The protesters to intensify their protest, will hit streets and protest before the Prime Minister
Kolkata: The sit-in by the Sikh protesters over the Khalistani slur entered seven days. As there is no concrete initiative taken by the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership on their demand for an apology, the Sikh community has decided to protest during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed visit to Bengal.
“We had demanded a written apology from PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. But even after sitting on dharna before the party office for a week, no action has been taken by the BJP leadership. So now we have to intensify our protest. We will hit the streets as well as protest during PM Modi’s Bengal visit,” Gurmeet Singh, who has also registered an FIR on Khalistani slur by the BJP leaders, told eNewsroom.
PM Modi will be in Bengal on March 1,2 and 6. However, Gurmeet Singh did not mention on which date they will protest.
He also informed that a Sikh delegation met Bengal Chief Secretary Bhagwati Prasad Gopalika on Monday and requested him to take action on the FIR lodged against the BJP leaders.
Meanwhile, after the Khalistani slur, made by Bharatiya Janata party’s Bengal leaders on an Indian Police Service officer Jaspreet Singh, BJP leaders shared a video of Balvinder Singh, who was misbehaved by Bengal police.
Listen to the entire story of Balvinder Singh incident
Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in Bengal and the one who was leading the party’s delegation en route to Sandeshkhali, and Amit Malviya, who heads saffron brigades IT Cell were the prominent names who had shared the video on X. They both equated the Khalistani slur incident with the Balvinder Singh episode and tried to point out that when Bengal police did it with Balvinder Singh, then Sikh’s pride was not hurt, why is it so now.
eNewsroom, which visited the site of the Sikh protest in front of BJP’s office in Kolkata and met protesting Sikhs, there one Inder Singh told the entire story of what happened after the incident.
Sumanpreet Singh, a protester sitting at the dharna said, “So far only Rahul Sinha came to us and said that ‘if’ such thing has happened, I express apology for it. But he used the word if it happened. For that, we have put a big screen of that particular video showing the moment when Khalistani word was used followed by the reply of IPS Jaspreet Singh. So we do not consider his apology sufficient.”
“BJP is having double standards. On one side they will pay respect to our leaders, but on the other, their leaders will not only give hate speeches during elections as it happened in Rajasthan, they had said that they will break down Gurudwaras and Mosques if they come to power,their people use derogatory word like Khalistani to address us,” Sumanpreet added.
