CHANDIGARH: A day before the community (Panthic) congregation to be held on July 5 by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) in connection with the controversial viral video involving Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann at Amritsar, the devotees arriving at Golden Temple under the ``Mukhyamantri Teerth Yatra Yojana’’ of AAP led Punjab Government were today asked to remove identity cards carrying the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s photograph before entering the holy shrine.
Following the political controversy triggered by the video, the Akal Takht declared Mann "Guru Dokhi" and "Khalsa Panth Virodhi."
A large number of devotees from different districts of the state came to the Golden Temple under the government-sponsored pilgrimage scheme to pay their obeisance. But the sikh activists associated with the Awaaz-e-Qaum organisation led by Nobeljit Singh raised a strong objection when they noticed that many devotees were wearing identification cards bearing CM Mann's photograph.
They raised the objections, saying that Akal Takht had declared the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann as `` Guru Dokhi ‘’ so the pilgrims should not enter the temple complex wearing identity cards displaying his photograph. Sources said that these activists asked these group of devotees to remove their identity cards from around their necks before proceeding to the shrine. Thus the devotees complied with the directions and removed the cards.
But some of them said that these identity cards had been issued by the government only for identification during the journey so that members of the group could be easily identified as they would not get separated and added that these cards had no other purpose.