india

Updated: Nov 07, 2019 20:11 IST

Three letters later, former Punjab minister Navjot Sidhu was on Thursday granted political clearance to travel through Kartarpur corridor to Durbar Sahib gurdwara to attend the inauguration of the corridor by Prime Minister Imran Khan on November 9, people familiar with the development said.

The foreign ministry decision came late on Thursday evening, hours after Sidhu sent his third request to the government to seek its approval to travel to Kartarpur where Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, spent his final years.

The corridor, first proposed by India two decades ago, links Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab with Darbar Sahib gurdwara at Kartarpur, 4 km from the border in Pakistan.

The government is learnt to have been uncomfortable at Navjot Sidhu’s decision to accept Pakistan government’s invite to travel across the border to join the event across the border.

His party colleague and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had made it clear that he would have preferred if Sidhu, like the rest of them, had travelled as part of the delegation going from India.

Sidhu has been unreachable and hasn’t responded to requests for his reaction. But his letters to the government on his requests to the Centre have been put out in public domain.

In his last letter, Navjot Sidhu had objected to the government’s reluctance to take a stand on his request. In this, Sidhu promised to stay put in India like any law-abiding citizen if the government explicitly advised against the trip.

But he demanded a clear-cut response, declaring that he would travel to Kartarpur on a Pakistani visa if the government didn’t respond to his request. A Pakistan foreign office spokesperson confirmed in Islamabad that Navjot Singh Sidhu had already been issued a visa to visit the holy shrine. This implied that Sidhu was not dependent on travelling via the corridor - which allows pilgrims to cross the border without a visa - and could reach Pakistan by any other route.

New Delhi had earlier frowned at the attention given to Navjot Sidhu’s travel and underscored that the inauguration of the Kartarpur corridor is a “very historic” event and it is not important to highlight any one individual.

Navjot Singh Sidhu - who had travelled to Pakistan to attend the oath ceremony of Imran Khan, friends from their cricketing days - was told by Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa that Islamabad was ready to build the corridor to facilitate travel of pilgrims to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

But Sidhu’s visit to Pakistan in 2018 had drawn criticism from various quarters in India after he hugged the Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa at Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.

Sidhu had later also attended the ground-breaking ceremony of the corridor in Pakistan in November 2018.

The prime ministers of both countries are set to inaugurate separate sections of the corridor, which links Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Gurdaspur to Durbar Sahib gurdwara in Pakistan’s Kartarpur, on Saturday against the backdrop of heightened bilateral tensions and the snapping of almost of all formal contacts.