Harsimrat brings home soil from Guru Nanak's final resting place

Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal Wednesday brought home some soil from Pakistan's Kartarpur, where Guru Nanak Dev spent his last days.

She also brought some flowers, prashad' and 'chappatis' for her husband and Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal from the gurdwara at Kartarpur, where she attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a corridor linking it with a shrine in Gurdaspur.

She and her colleague Hardeep Singh Puri returned here Wednesday evening after attending the ceremony in Pakistan.

The two Union ministers attended the event as representatives of the Indian government.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu was also invited there in his personal capacity.

Meeting reporters at the border crossing in Amritsar district, Badal said she performed the 'sewa' of cleaning utensils at the Kartarpur gurdwara complex.

Puri said he hoped that there would be no obstacles to the building of the Kartarpur corridor on both sides of the India-Pakistan border.

Badal and Puri Wednesday morning had crossed over to Pakistan through the Attari-Wagah land route.

The planned corridor will link Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur with the Kartarpur shrine across the border, fulfilling a long-pending demand of the Sikh community.

Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, spent the last 18 years of his life in Kartarpur.