Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Two days ahead of Guru Nanak Jayanti (Friday, November 19), India has decided to reopen the Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara tomorrow, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced on Tuesday.
The Corridor connects Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, the ultimate resting place of Guru Nanak Dev, founder of Sikhism, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district.
Punjab is scheduled to go to the Assembly elections next year.
“In a major decision that will benefit large numbers of Sikh pilgrims, PM @Narendramodi government has decided to re-open the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor from tomorrow, Nov 17.
“This decision reflects the immense reverence of Modi government towards Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and our Sikh community,” Shah tweeted.
He said India is all set to celebrate the Prakash Utsav of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji on November 19 and he was confident that this move will further “boost the joy and happiness across the country”.
The Kartarpur Sahib Corridor is a visa-free border crossing that connects the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan to the India-Pakistan border. It allows Sikh and Hindu devotees from India to visit the Gurdwara in Kartarpur at a distance of 4.7 km across the international border.
But this is a one-way corridor as Pakistani Sikhs cannot use it to visit the Dera Baba Nanak Gurdwara in Indian Punjab, without first getting an Indian visa or unless they already work in this country.
The creation of this Corridor had first been proposed in early 1999 by then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif as part of the Delhi-Lahore Bus diplomacy.
PM Narendra Modi laid its foundation stone on November 26, 2018, on the Indian side. His Pakistani counterpart, Imran Khan, did so two days later.
They completed work on the Kartarpur Corridor for the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak on November 12, 2019.
This Corridor eased the Indian pilgrims’ travel. Earlier, they had to take a bus to Lahore to reach Kartarpur, 125 km away, even though the people on the Indian side of the border could also physically see Gurdwara Darbar Sahib from the Indian side at a distance of less than five km. from an elevated observation platform.