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AMRITSAR:
Falstaff is king, once again. Till slightly more than a year
ago, Avtar Singh Makkar was fighting little turfwars in Ludhiana’s
streets and gurdwara committees but Akali Dal supremo Prakash Singh
Badal was looking for a Falstaff to be turned into a king.
Conditions: he should be urban non-Sikh, non-ambitious and political
pygmy. Makkar fitted the bill, and spent the next one year running
every errand for Badal, custom-designing the invitations for Sikh
centenaries in order to keep out the rivals, ensuring that political
leaders like Simranjit Singh Mann are humiliated f they raise
any important decision, and perform a somersault chanting ‘Vande
Mataram’ if Badal and Co. so desired. So, on
November 25, the SGPC general house elected Makkar as president once
again. The opponents had put up a joint candidate in Gurwinder Singh
Shampura, an SGPC member who had revolted from the Badal group, but
he was defeated by Makkar in by 104 votes. Makkar got 135 votes.
Minutes later, Shampura was expelled from the party by Badal. But
the good news was the success of some panthic organisations in
focussing on reforms in SGPC through a White Paper (See accompanying
story). Rest of the office bearers also remained almost
unchanged. Raghujit Singh Virk, Kewal Singh Badal and Sukhdev Singh
Bhaur were elected senior vice president, vice president and general
secretary of the SGPC, repectively. Task force men were ready,
but Mann, who was in the complex, chose not to reach the
venue. Other the taskforce has a tradition of ‘preventing’ untoward
events by committing shameless ones itself. Political experts said
Makkar got the second term due to Badal’s continued need to
counter the Sarna brothers who have been making considerable inroads
in the urban Sikhs’ mindset. 
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