'Akal Takht' Reverses Patna 'Takht' Decision; Badal Detained

On 5 Jul, Takht Sri Patna Sahib (Throne, PT) declared Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal a tankhaiya (guilty of religious misconduct). The decision came after Badal failed to appear before the Takht despite being summoned twice. The reason for Badal being declared tankhaiya is a 21 May edict by Sri Akal Takht Sahib (Eternal Throne, AT) when AT barred Takht Patna Sahib Jathedar (leader)-cum-head granthi (hymns’ reciter) Giani Baldev Singh and additional head granthi Gurdial Singh from participating in community services. Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Harjinder Singh Dhami termed the decision beyond the jurisdiction of Patna Takht (PT) . He said the traditions and customs of the Khalsa Panth (Sikhs Collective) are meant to resolve community issues, not to create crises within the community. He said that undermining the AT's supremacy, the supreme temporal seat of the faith, is inappropriate, and such actions could lead to discord within the Sikh community. AT Jathedar Kuldeep Singh Gargajj condemned PT’s actions and overturned the decision to name Badal a tankhaiya; He said the decision was a direct violation of the 2003 edict, signed by jathedars of all five Takhts. The edict emphasized that while the regional Takhts have jurisdiction over local religious, social, and cultural matters, only AT can make decisions on Panth-wide issues. However, PT has dismissed the AT orders as null and void. Earlier, on 2 Jul, in Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, the Panjab Police stopped Badal's convoy and detained him and other senior party leaders near Burail Jail ahead of his address at a workers rally. While the SAD leadership maintained their visit was 'purely spiritual', the police pointed to heightened security concerns due to the court appearance of senior SAD leader and Badal’s brother-in-law, Bikram Singh Majithia. Badal accused the Bhagwant Singh Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party government of imposing an 'undeclared emergency' in Panjab. Meanwhile, Majithia’s custody has been extended by 14 days (earlier coverage).

India's Leader of Opposition, Indian National Congress' Rahul Gandhi responded to a Varanasi court case over his remarks in favor of the Sikh community during his September 2024 talk in the US. Speaking at Washington DC, Gandhi had accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of treating some religions, languages, and cultures as 'inferior' to others and expressed concern over the status of religious and linguistic minorities in India. He pointed at a Sikh man in the audience, asked his name and said, 'The fight is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear his turban in India or a kada (bracelet) in India. Or he, as a Sikh, is going to be able to go to Gurdwara. That’s what the fight is about. And not just for him, for all religions.' The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had taken great affront and a person named Nageshwar Mishra had filed the case. Gandhi said he was a true ‘patriot’ and stood by his statement. The use of the word patriot is an interesting juxtaposition against the ‘nationalism’ promoted by Hindutva forces including RSS and BJP. Meanwhile, in the UK, the family of a Sikh activist Avtar Singh Khanda who died suddenly in June 2023 have made new calls for an inquest after a pathologist found the result of the postmortem exam 'does not mean that a poisoning can be completely excluded.' Family lawyer Michael Polak said samples were not tested for 'nerve agents, biological agents, or nuclear agents', which could have brought about an aggressive cancer. In other news, in the US, new documentation has emerged on how Nikhil Gupta—the accused on assassination plot of Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun—recruited a Columbian drug trafficker to carry out the killing. A side note is that Gupta has a son in India as well as in Pakistan, he also had a Pakistan passport. Gupta has denied the Pakistan connection. The story by National Post also says, 'It is unusual for this insider information in an ongoing criminal case to be available publicly' (earlier coverage).

With 19 months to go for the 2027 Assembly elections in Panjab, Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann carried out yet another cabinet reshuffle, his seventh in a little over three years. In this reshuffle, newly elected Ludhiana (West) Member of Legislative Assembly Sanjeev Arora was inducted into the cabinet, while Non Resident Indians (NRI) Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal resigned. Arora, a 61-year-old Ludhiana-based industrialist and social worker, who served as a Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Indian Parliament) Member for three years, was sworn in as a cabinet minister after winning the Ludhiana (West) by-poll. The Panjab diaspora said Dhaliwal had renounced his US citizenship to work for Aam Aadmi Party but had failed to deliver. The diaspora has welcomed Arora being made the NRI minister but has demanded he performs. Indian National Congress MLA Pargat Singh has raised concerns over Arora’s appointment as the Industry and NRI minister. He pointed out that appointing Arora as minister of a department connected to his businesses amounted to conflict of interest. Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Pritpal Singh Baliawal said Arora is notorious for converting industrial land into residential land. Now that the government has allowed industrial land to be fragmented, as a minister Arora would do just that and the appointment is an office of profit issue. Meanwhile, the govt is facing flak over its land polling scheme. Several landowners and farmers from Siaun, Kurdi, Patton, Kishanpura, and Naraingarh villages near Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar have decided against giving their land to Greater Mohali Area Development Authority’s plan to acquire 3,537 acres. Panchayats (village councils) and representatives from six villages in Jalandhar and one in Phagwara, where 1,200 acres of land is coming under the land pooling policy, have also decided to unite in opposition to the state govt's move to acquire land in the villages. Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Badal announced a series of protests, starting from Ludhiana on July 15, against the state govt's land pooling policy (earlier coverage).

As of May, industrial units across Ludhiana city have collectively defaulted on electricity bills amounting to USD 2.3M. Among the major defaulters, Ludhiana East circle alone accounts for USD 1.3M in outstanding bills. Notably, at the beginning of the current financial year, pending dues stood at USD 2.2M. Solving this debt is one of the first issues the newly inducted Panjab industries minister Sanjeev Arora has on his hands. On 1 Jul, at the peak of paddy season, nearly 5.5K contractual employees went on strike, and regular employees of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) adopted ‘work-to-rule’ action to protest the Panjab government’s alleged failure to implement long-pending demands. The protesting contractual employees are demanding compensation for the families of those who died in the line of duty, a job for the next of kin in such cases, and regularisation of their services. Under the ‘work-to-rule’ policy, PSPCL’s regular employees have decided not to attend to phone calls after their eight-hour work schedule and have refused to undertake any overtime, which they had previously agreed to do to manage increased workloads. However, the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) Engineers Association has not joined this protest. To manage complaints, the PSPCL management, as part of their strategy, has recently issued orders at the division level to form special outsourced units to ensure uninterrupted supply of workforce during protests and strikes. Union leader Krishan Singh Aulakh said, 'This is not about providing uninterrupted electricity supply to consumers—it is a conspiracy to weaken the struggle against privatization. It is a clear attempt to pit consumers and employees against each other to divide them.' Meanwhile, on 7 Jul, Panjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann and National Convener of Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated a 15 million gallons per day—upgraded from 10 MGD—capacity Sewage Treatment Plant worth USD 16.9M at Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar. City mayor Amarjit Singh Sidhu has asked Mann to also address the city’s escalating solid waste crisis (earlier coverage).

The Indian Union Ministry of Health and Family welfare approved supplementary funding of USD 2.7M for Panjab under the National Health Mission (NHM) for the financial year 2025–26. The additional funding aims to boost nutrition support for tuberculosis patients, promote innovative public health campaigns, and strengthen digital mental health infrastructure across the state. With the latest approvals, Panjab's total NHM allocation for 2025–26 now stands at USD 215M, which includes both previously sanctioned funds and the newly approved supplementary proposals. Meanwhile, in Panjab, there are only 45 psychiatrists for the state government’s 542 Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) clinics. Amid shortage of psychiatrists, the Panjab Health Department has decided to train Medical Officers in basic psychiatry to do their job and effectively run the OOAT clinics. Psychiatrists perform a host of jobs, like monitoring and adjusting opioid dosages, approving new patient registrations and authorizing home dosages. In other news, Panjab has emerged as the top performer in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2024, said Harjot Singh Bains, Minister of School Education. NAS selects students from Classes 3, 6, and 9 as samples to evaluate overall education outcomes. Bains said Panjab stood first with 80 marks in the Class 3 ranking, surpassing Himachal Pradesh (74) and Kerala (73). Bains added, in 2025, 845 govt school students qualified the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test while 265 students successfully cleared the Joint Entrance Examination. In an initiative to promote Panjabi as the mother tongue at both national and international levels, the Punjab State Education Board (PSEB) has introduced the International Punjabi Boli Olympiad as an annual event. Concurrently, Delhi University plans to introduce a course on Sikh martyrdom for all undergraduate students, focusing on how the Sikh community emerged in response to religious persecution and imperialist oppression during the Mughal period and later during foreign invasions. The course will be offered by the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies as a four-credit generic elective based on Undergraduate Curriculum Framework, 2022, making it accessible to students across disciplines (earlier coverage).

On 4 Jul, US President Donald Trump signed into law the so-called Big Beautiful Bill which is a package of tax and spending cuts. On the occasion, Trump staged an outdoor ceremony that took on the air of a political rally. Indian nationals, including Panjabis, in the US who send money back home are set to benefit from tax cuts on remittances down to 1%. According to the World Bank, the US sent USD 80B in outward remittances in 2022, making it the largest sender of remittances in the world. India is the world's top receiver of remittances. Immigrants who send wages home via wire transfers will still be taxed, though money sent via banks will now be exempt. That would be welcome news for high-earning, short-term migrants, such as tech workers from India. Meanwhile, a harrowing tale of illegal immigration has come to light as five youths—four from Panjab and one from Haryana—attempting to reach the US through the notorious 'donkey route' fell victim to brutal torture at the hands of human traffickers in Colombia. One of the illegal migrants is Balwinder Singh. According to his family, Balwinder was abducted in February 2025. The gang allegedly subjected the youths to third-degree torture to extort ransom from their families. The family has approached Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) Member Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal to help Balwinder return to India. In other news, on 6 Jul, in the UK, Navroop Singh was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 14 years behind bars for five charges, including rape, by the Isleworth Crown Court. Navroop had previously pleaded guilty to three offences: possession of an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence, rape of a girl under 13, and assault of the girl. He had been additionally convicted of the attempted rape of a woman in west London in October 2024 following a four-day trial.

As he announced 25–40% tariffs on 14 nations, on 7 Jul, US President Donald Trump said the US is close to reaching a trade deal with India. Trump said that the US had made a deal with the UK and China. He also said he had sent a letter to the nations that he believed would not make a deal with the US. The trade deal assumes urgency because of Trump’s 90-day deadline which expires 9 Jul. Indian government sources say a mini-deal will likely be announced on 8 Jul, the full deal is likely to be signed after more negotiations between the two countries later this year. At the center of the deadlock is agriculture. The US has been pushing India to significantly open its domestic market by reducing tariffs on farm produce like soybeans, wheat, corn, apples, dairy products, and processed foods. The US has also demanded easier market access for Genetically Modified (GM) crops, which India has long resisted due to health and regulatory concerns. India is citing the need to protect its small farmers and food security system, particularly the Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime that underpins rural stability and welfare. MSP has been a major concern of Panjab farmers. After the Farmers Protest 1.0 in 2020–21, Panjab’s farmers started another protest for MSP in February 2024. Another sticking point is farm trade. While current India-US farm trade is modest at $8B, the US wants to boost exports of maize, soybeans, cotton, and corn to reduce its $45B trade deficit with India. India is open to lowering tariffs on walnuts, cranberries, and other fruits, along with medical devices, autos, and energy products but not all US products. If the 9 Jul deadline passes without an agreement, India faces restoration of suspended tariffs, hurting key exports like aluminium, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. Trade tensions could escalate, affecting bilateral cooperation in strategic sectors such as defense, technology, and energy (earlier coverage).

On 7 Jul, the Panjab government withdrew its consent to the Bhakra Beas Management Board for the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at the dams operated by it. This decision comes over a month after the union govt decided to deploy the CISF at the Bhakra dam project amid a tussle between Panjab and neighboring Haryana over the sharing of river waters. Since the Bhakra-Nagal project spans both Himachal Pradesh and Panjab, the Bhakra dam is being guarded by the Himachal Police with 347 policemen against a sanctioned strength of 288. The Nangal dam is currently secured by 146 personnel of the Panjab Police against a sanctioned strength of 83. Meanwhile, on 30 Jun, Chandigarh recorded the highest June rain in decade at 213 mm; it was 37% above normal. The water level in Sukhna lake has touched 1,158 ft; this prompted the authorities to open two of the three floodgates. In Panjab, the India Meteorological Department has issued a red alert for heavy rain and thunderstorms for the entire east Panjab from Hoshiarpur to Rajpura. In Himachal Pradesh, the Beas river is in spate. The death toll from cloudbursts and flash flood-related incidents in the Mandi district rose to 11 with the recovery of six additional bodies. Concurrently, the Public Action Committee (PAC) has filed a contempt petition against the concerned Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) officials and directors of the Bahadur Ke Road Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) for intentionally violating National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) orders on effluent discharge into Buddha Nullah. While the original petition was filed at NGT against CETPs at Bahadur Ke Road, Tajpur Road, and Focal Point, the reason for this contempt petition is that Bahadur Ke Road CETP received a separate environment compensation in 2014, which mandated Zero Liquid Discharge—a condition it consistently failed to meet. PAC says, all three CETPs are funded by union and state govts yet have failed to honor mandatory conditions due to the active connivance of PPCB officials (earlier coverage).

On 5 Jul, Panjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann announced the state government will introduce a legislation to ensure harsher punishment for acts of sacrilege against religious scriptures. Chairing a meeting with officers and representatives of the Sarb Dharam Beadbi Rokko Kanoon Morcha (All Religions Stop Blasphemy Front), Mann said that Panjab is a 'sacred land' of great gurus, saints, and seers who have shown the path of 'mutual love and tolerance.' Mann reiterated that the Panjab govt is firmly committed to ensuring 'exemplary punishment' for the perpetrators of blasphemy. However, the move does not seem any different from what the Indian National Congress’ Panjab govt (2017–22) had enacted. That bill was rejected by the then Governor of Panjab Vijayendra Pal Singh Badnore. There is no clarity on how this bill will pass beyond the Panjab Legislative Assembly and if it will be effective in containing incidents of sacrilege. Meanwhile, Panjab Finance and Taxation minister Harpal Singh Cheema said, at USD 320M, the state registered a record 44% year-on-year growth in net Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection for June 2025 and 27.01% growth for the first quarter of the 2025–26 financial year. Cheema also stated that the Panjab govt recently invested USD 116.8M each in the Guarantee Redemption Fund and Consolidated Sinking Fund, with the latter now exceeding USD 1.16B. The Panjab govt is now going to raise USD 993M loan during July–September. With this, the total borrowings raised by the govt during this fiscal year will touch USD 1.6B. Also, on 26 Jun, the Panjab govt suspended 26 officers and employees of Jail Department for dereliction of duty. Panjab Jail Minister Laljit Singh Bhullar said that the officers and employees have been suspended with immediate effect under Punjab Civil Services (Punishment and Appeal) Rules, 1970 for dereliction of duty and negligence. The action comes as part of a broader drive to root out corruption and dismantle drug networks operating inside prisons (earlier coverage).

A refreshing alliance between musicians Qais Essar, an Afghan-American Muslim, and Sonny Singh, an American Sikh. Together, they are composing an album, Sangat, using the Rabab (a string instrument) and Trumpet, which harks back to the defining narratives of Bhakti and Sufi movements (two prominent socio-religious movements in Hinduism and Islam). Among its three compositions released so far, one is an iconic Sufi song, Lal meri pat, praising the 12^th Century mystic Shabaaz Qalandar, and the other two are the renditions of Sikh hymns reimagined on the warm timbre of rabab and accented by the jazzy, raw harmonics of trumpet. Singh describes the album as a project that is not only a meeting of diverse musical and spiritual traditions, but also a reflection of art as a vehicle for connection, resistance and healing. 'In the Sikh community, we generally refer to worshippers inside a Gurdwara as sangat (beloved community). In this project, we would like to define sangat as something broader, where our ethnic, national and religious identities are porous.' Sonny and Qais started working on Sangat in October 2024. Recorded mostly in Qais’s studio in Payson, Arizona, Sangat will be released in October through his indie label and production company Ghost Songs. With five albums and 12 Extended Plays to his credit, Qais’s merit in pursuing music through rabab commands attention. He confirms his family’s commitment to art, poetry, and music—stating that his grandfather played tambour—but, he assures: 'I am the first rabab player in my family.' Rabab is the national instrument of Afghanistan, the country from where Qais’s parents migrated to the US in 1982. The instrument, though not banned, is under threat from Taliban’s ban on music. In the Sikh community, the conversations on the rabab gathered steam in 2022 when the Akal Takht (Eternal Throne) Jathedar (leader) requested the replacement of the harmonium with traditional string instruments such as the dilruba, rabab, and sarangi in kirtan (hymn singing) at the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple).