Longowal re-elected as SGPC chief

Four time-legislator and former cabinet minister Gobind Singh Longowal was Tuesday unanimously re-elected as SGPC president.

The announcement was made here during the annual general house meeting of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC)-- the apex gurdwara body.

Longowal has become the 43rd president of the committee, having taken over the post for the first time in 2017.

His name was proposed by former SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur and seconded by another former SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar, an official said.

As he was re-elected unopposed, religious slogans rented the air at the Teja Singh Samudari Hall in the premises of the body which manages gurdwaras of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.

Gurbachan Singh Karmuwal was elected as the general secretary while Ragujit Singh Virk was appointed as senior vice president of the SGPC. Bikar Singh was made the junior vice president of the body.

Meanwhile, 11 executive members of the SGPC too were elected on the occasion.

Longowal had won the assembly elections in 1985, 1997 and 2002 as well as the by-elections from Dhuri when Congress MLA Arvind Khanna resigned in 2015.

He was appointed as a cabinet minister in the Akali Dal government and became a member of the SGPC in 2011.

The meeting, though was not bereft of drama as some members of the SGPC boycotted the elections.

They left the venue in solidarity with the Sikhs agitating at Bargari to demand the arrest of culprits involved in sacrilege incidents.

There are a total of 180 members of SGPC general house of which, 174 have voting rights. Of 174, 159 are elected and 15 are nominated.

Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding historian Kirpal Singh too cropped up during the meeting.

Kirpal Singh was removed as chairman of Sikh History Resource Editing Project by the SGPC for alleged distortion of Sikh history in class 12 school books.

As SGPC member Bibi Kiranjot Kaur stood up to defend the historian, she was not allowed to do so.