By Express News Service
CHANDIGARH: With Assembly elections just a couple of months away, political parties in Punjab are playing the religion card to woo Hindus and Sikhs.
With eye on the 38 per cent Hindu vote bank, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal and other leaders reached Salasar Dham in Rajasthan as part of their recent visits to Hindu religious shrines.
Sources said Badal with a few MLAs and ex-MLAs paid obeisance to Balaji Maharaj at Salasar Dham. They prayed for peace, communal harmony and brotherhood in Punjab.
A few days ago during Navratri, Badal was in Chintpurni temple in Himachal Pradesh, other than visiting temples in Amritsar and Jalandhar.
Former Union minister and MP from Bathinda, Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Sukhbir’s wife) urged PM Narendra Modi to intervene and approve a proposal for a land swap between India and Pakistan for merger of the holy shrine at Kartarpur Sahib in India in exchange for a a suitable chunk of land elsewhere on the lines of the Hussainiwala village exchange.
She said this would be “the first step towards the eventual fulfilment of the sacred Sikh prayer for unhindered access and the right to perform service of the Guru in the sacred shrines taken away from the Sikh masses in 1947.” She urged Modi to get the Kartarpur Sahib corridor re-opened.
Meanwhile, Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu went to ICP at Kartarpur corridor on the Indo-Pak border demanding that the Centre should open the corridor so that Sikh pilgrims can visit gurdwaras in Pakistan.