Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday demanded to do away with the lifting the mandatory passport condition for those pilgrims visiting Kartarpur Sahib through the corridor.
AAP’s MLA and the Leader of Opposition in Vidhan Sabha Harpal Singh Cheema said that the Government should simplify the process of ‘darshan-e-didar’ of Sri Kartarpur Sahib, by lifting the mandatory passport condition.
Cheema said that the existing terms and conditions were a tad tough and tedious, depriving a vast majority of common people to visit the shrine through the Kartarpur corridor, while urging to simplify the conditions so that they were not deprived of ‘darshan’ of the shrine.
Describing mandatory condition of passport as the major hurdle in the way of having shrine’s ‘darshan’, Cheema said that almost half of the desirous population had been debarred from the ‘darshan’ as they don’t fulfil the condition of passport laid out by the dispensation.
He said that almost 60 percent of the people of the state, a majority of them poor and common people, do not possess passport as they are not able to have one due to financial constraints.
He demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention in the matter to lift the statutory condition and press the Pakistan Government to lift the passport condition to enable a large number of devotees to visit the shrine where the first Sikh master, Guru Nanak Dev spent his last days.
