Capt, SGPC spar over $20 fee to Kartarpur shrine in Pak

As Pakistan remains unyielding on charging a $20 fee from pilgrims visiting the Kartarpur Sahib shrine in the neighbouring country, the Punjab government and the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) are asking each other to foot the bill.

The $20 fee being charged by Pakistan is turning out to be a big deterrent for devotees to pay obeisance at the historic Kartarpur Sikh shrine where the founder of Sikh religion, Guru Nanak Dev, spent his last 18-years of life. Governments plea to urge the centre to bear the cost of the entry fee too has yielded no headway.

Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh has asked the cash-rich SGPC, the Sikh body managing majority of prominent Sikh shrines in India, to take over the burden of the $20 entry fee to help pilgrims. The SPGC instead retorted asking the Punjab government to foot the bill.

The logjam continues amid repeated pleas even to Pakistan Prime Minister to consider waiving off the entry fee. Before the final agreement on opening of the Kartarpur corridor link connecting the two nations was signed between India and Pakistan, bureaucrats from the Centre who were engaged in drafting the agreement too had vehemently resisted Pakistan’s attempt to bring in the clause of the $20 entry fee, but to no avail.

The falling number of pilgrims going to the Kartarpur Shine in Pakistan through the corridor ever since the inauguration of the corridor link indicates the adverse impact of the entry fee. As per the agreement, not more than 5000 pilgrims would be allowed in a single day to visit the historic shrine in Kartarpur through the corridor link. However, the dwindling numbers have remained limited to a few hundred only.

On the 12th after the inauguration of the corridor link on either side by prime ministers of both nations, only 239 pilgrims went through the corridor link to the Kartarpur corridor. The numbers have been hovering around only a few hundreds daily against a projection of 5000 every day, sources said. The prerequisite of a passport is another deterrent as many in the hinterland do not have a passport.