Senior Congress leader and the Leader of Opposition in Punjab Vidhan Sabha Partap Singh Bajwa on Wednesday demanded a special assembly session to discuss the sacrilege issue.

In separate letters to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Bajwa sought Assembly’s one-day special session to deliberate on the “continuous attempts” to desecrate the Guru Granth Sahib — Sikhs’ holy book.

“Sacrilege incidents are nothing short of a grave crime for which the most deterrent punishment should be given to the perpetrators...However, with the lenient contemporary laws, the culprits are fearlessly going ahead with their acts of desecration due to which the number of such incidents has reached more than 400 in the last few years,” claimed Bajwa.

Bajwa said that he saw tears rolling down the eyes of the devotees who attended the July 17 Khalsa Congregation on the issue of sacrilege at Sri Fatehgarh Sahib. “I fail to understand how can we, as politicians, be (so) insensitive that we cannot wipe the tears of the people of our state,” he said in his letter, written in Punjabi.

Bajwa urged the Chief Minister and the Speaker to convene a one-day special session of the Punjab Assembly “to seriously deliberate upon this emotive issue and arrive at meaningful decisions to assuage the feelings of widespread hurt”.

Notably, in 2015, a 'bir' (copy) of the Guru Granth Sahib was stolen from a gurdwara, handwritten sacrilegious posters were put up and torn pages of the holy book were found scattered in separate incidents in Faridkot in 2015.

These incidents led to anti-sacrilege protests in Faridkot. In police firing at anti-sacrilege protesters in October 2015, two persons were killed in Behbal Kalan and a few others were injured in Kotkapura.