The SGPC elections are to be conducted every five years by the Gurdwara Election Commission set up by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the last elections to the SGPC took place in 2011 and the members elected then continue to hold their posts.
The elections were expected to take place early this year, but with the latest extension given for registration of voters, they are now expected to take place sometime next year.
While earlier the reason cited by the gurdwara election commissioner for granting additional time for registration of voters was the low number of voters being registered, the commission has attributed the latest extension to preoccupation of the Punjab government machinery with the recently concluded bypolls in the state and the ongoing paddy procurement.
From the time the process of registration of voters began in October last year, till April this year, the number of registered voters had touched only 27.5 lakh, almost half the number of voters registered for the last elections that took place in September 2011. Almost 52 lakh voters had registered for the 2011 elections and almost 63 percent voting had taken place.
Sources in the commission told ThePrint that the number of voters registered till now had touched Rs 50 lakh and the likelihood of more voters registering till 15 December was little.
Issuing a fresh schedule for the elections, the commission wrote to the Punjab government that the process of printing of electoral rolls would finish by 2 January next year and the lists will be made public by 3 January for receipt of claims and objections till 24 January. The printing of supplementary rolls is to end by 24 February and the final publication of voter rolls will be done on 25 February.
The date of the election is expected to be notified after this process is over.
“It is appropriate to note that the registration of eligible Sikh persons as voters and for the preparation of the voters’ list has been extended from time to time. The eligible persons getting themselves registered has been somewhat slow. It is to be kept in mind that elections for members of the board of the SGPC are being held after a decade. Besides, the government has been involved in other jobs that required attention,” chief election commissioner Justice S.S Saron said in a communication to the Punjab government.
“The commission on its own does not have sufficient and adequate staff for the conduct of the election… it is dependent on government machinery,” he added.
The task of registration is carried out by patwaris and block-level officers with deputy commissioners of various districts given the responsibility of the entire process.
ThePrint outlines the SGPC’s functions and its elections, an exercise that has not been held in the last 13 years, and its link with Punjab’s politics.
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‘Mini parliament’
The creation of the SGPC was the result of the Gurdwara Reform Movement of the 1920s, as part of which Sikh leaders wrested control of gurdwaras from mahants, the hereditary managers of gurdwaras.
The gurdwara reform movement culminated in the adoption of the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 that established the SGPC as a body corporate.
The SGPC has 180 members, of which 159 are elected from clearly defined geographical constituencies. The voting takes place through ballot paper in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.
As many as 15 members are nominated from among prominent Sikhs across India while six members include the five high priests and the head granthi of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Since it is an elected body, the SGPC is also called the “mini parliament” of Sikhs.
The SGPC presidential elections are held every year to select its chief from among the members. While elections to the SGPC board have not taken place since 2011, polls for the post of president have been held every year.
The SGPC president, an 11-member executive body and office-bearers chosen from among the members of the SGPC are responsible for the day-to-day working of the body.
Advocate Harjinder Singh Dhami was re-elected as SGPC president last month.
Apart from being baptised Sikhs, SGPC members are expected to be adept in the knowledge of Sikh history and scriptures. They are expected to be spiritual besides strictly adhering to the Sikh rehat maryada (code of conduct). However, far from the ideal situation, some SGPC members including some presidents have been mired in controversies over the years, including charges of corruption and misconduct.
Powerful body
The SGPC commands authority not just over the functioning of some of the biggest gurdwaras but is responsible for their financial management as well. The Golden Temple alone has an annual budget of Rs 1,000 crore.
The office of the SGPC is within the premises of the Golden Temple.
SGPC draws temporal strength from working in tandem with the five takhts or seats of power of the Sikh community, including the Akal Takht Amritsar, considered to be the highest temporal body of the Sikhs. The high priests of the five takhts are ex-officio members of the SGPC.
Apart from managing gurdwaras, the SGPC is also entrusted with the task of propagating the Sikh religion. It exhorts Sikhs across the world to uphold the Sikh rehat maryada. The SGPC is the only body that can print and distribute saroops (forms) of the Guru Granth Sahib, considered to be a living guru by the Sikhs.
The SGPC also runs several education institutions, including schools, colleges, polytechnics, a university, a medical college and a dental college.
The SGPC is also the final authority in cases where either Sikhs or non-Sikhs come into conflict with the conventions and traditions of the Sikh religion.
The SGPC also takes up Sikh issues with the government of India and foreign governments as well, if certain rules and regulations formulated by them threaten to compromise the maryada of any Sikh.
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SAD control over SGPC
Although most major political parties in Punjab field their candidates for the SGPC polls, it is the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) that has had almost unbroken control over the SGPC for the past few decades, with its candidates winning most of the seats in the SGPC board.
The SAD’s history is as old as that of the SGPC and the party was in fact created as the SGPC’s task force.
The Akalis face severe criticism from their political opponents for having a vice-like grip over the working of the SGPC, allegedly using Sikh institutions in furthering their political interests.
When the last elections to the SGPC were held in 2011, the SAD along with the Sant Samaj won 157 of the 170 seats. The number of elected seats has gone down to 159 after Haryana got a separate SGPC in 2022. Since the last elections, almost 30 members have passed away.
The president of SGPC has also mostly been an SAD member, although some serious attempts have been made in the recent past to replace an Akali president with one from the rebel factions of the SAD.
This October, when Dhami was elected as president for the fourth time, he defeated Akali rebel Bibi Jagir Kaur. Kaur is a prominent leader of the Akali Sudhar Lehar, a breakaway faction of the SAD.
The October election was crucial for the Akalis, amid heightened tensions with the Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of the Sikhs, that works in close administrative contact with the SGPC.
Dhami won comfortably, getting 107 votes out of the 142 votes polled. Kaur received only 33 votes, less than what she tallied in 2022. Two votes were declared invalid.
The delay in elections to the SGPC has also come in criticism from various political parties, including the Congress and the AAP, in power in Punjab, in the past few years.
These parties allege that not having elections benefits the SAD as it continues to have control over Sikh institutions and wield authority in politics using these institutions despite being out of power in Punjab for the past 10 years.
Apart from the main political parties in Punjab which make a bid for control of the SGPC, multiple radical organisations too vie for this power. In the 2011 elections, candidates put up by the SAD (Amritsar), a hardline group, had lost to the SAD. However, the recent resurgence of radical elements in Punjab politics is bound to get reflected in the SGPC elections as well.
Jailed Sikh hardliner Amritpal Singh, who was elected as MP from Khadoor Sahib in the parliamentary elections this year while under detention, has already made it clear on multiple locations that he would contest the SGPC elections along with other candidates that he may support.
Protracted litigation
Only those Sikhs are allowed to vote in the SGPC elections who are registered as voters by the Gurdwara Election Commission. Registered voters include the adult Sikh men and women who are keshdharis (those who have not shorn their hair) but may or may not be Amritdharis (baptised Sikhs). The registered voters should also not be smokers nor take alcoholic drinks.
Sehajdhari Sikhs—who practice Sikhism but may or may not use any of the five Ks of the Sikhs: kesh (unshorn hair and beard), kanga, (comb for the kesh), kara (an iron bracelet), kachhera (an undergarment) and kirpan (a sword)—cannot register as voters.
The Sehajdhari Sikh Party, a registered political party, contends that voting rights for SGPC polls were given to Sehajdhari Sikhs in 1944. In 2003, the central government brought about a notification that barred Sehajdharis from voting in these polls and the party has been fighting for restoring the voting rights since then.
The notification was challenged by the Sehajdharis in the Punjab and Haryana High Court but elections to the SGPC were not stayed, and took place in September 2011.
In December 2011, the court set aside the notification on the ground that the Government of India could not bring about any amendment in the Sikh Gurdwara Act, which was a central legislation, through a mere notification.
The SGPC challenged the order of the high court in the Supreme Court and the newly elected SGPC members were not allowed to start functioning. The court, however, allowed the 15-member committee of the president and other office-bearers chosen in 2010 to continue functioning till the matter was decided.
While the SC case was underway, in May 2016, Parliament amended the 1925 Act to withdraw voting rights from Sehajdharis. In September that year, the Supreme Court disposed of the SGPC petition on the ground that it had become irrelevant following the amendment to the 1925 Act by Parliament.
The members elected in 2011 joined office after the SC verdict in 2016, and counted from then, their five-year term ended in 2021.
The amendment to the 1925 Act was challenged by the Sehajdhari Sikh Party in the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2017, where the matter is still pending.
“The 2016 amendment has transformed the SGPC, which is widely considered a mini Parliament of Sikhs globally, into a body perceived as non-representative, limited only to a very small section of the Sikhs,” Dr Paramjit Singh Ranu, president of the party, told ThePrint Friday.
In April this year, the Sehajdhari Sikh Party filed an application in the ongoing case, praying for a stay on the registration of fresh voters for the next SGPC election till the litigation regarding the Sehajdhari Sikhs’ voting rights is pending in court.
Taking up the application, a division bench of the high court issued notice for 16 May to the Union of India, Punjab and SGPC over the issue. The bench ordered that the result of the SGPC elections would be subject to the outcome of the 2017 petition.
The next date of hearing in the matter is 16 January, 2025.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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