By IANS
Chandigarh : The Dera Sacha Sauda sect is under fresh pressure to apologize to the Sikh community for offending their religious sensibilities and to end an ugly row that has paralyzed Punjab.
Hectic parleys are likely Saturday in a bid to resolve the dispute between Sikh groups and the sect ahead of a Sunday deadline set by the Akal Takht – the highest temporal seat of Sikhism – for the Dera to vacate all its premises from Punjab.
With the Akal Takht and other Sikh groups demanding action against dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim, whose actions they say have hurt the religious sentiments of Sikhs, pressure is mounting on the sect to issue an unconditional apology.
The sect leader had last week attired himself like the 10th Sikh guru Gobind Singh, offending many Sikhs and resulting in large-scale violence in Punjab.
Hardline Sikh bodies are demanding that the deras in Punjab be closed and the sect chief be arrested.
The Punjab government said it was fully prepared to tackle any situation Sunday when the deadline to vacate deras in Punjab expires.
"We will maintain law and order in the state," Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said.
Ruling Akali Dal working president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who returned from abroad Friday, said efforts were on to diffuse the crisis.
However, he blamed the sect and the Congress party – whom the dera had supported in the recent Punjab assembly polls – for the present chaos.
The sect management Friday approached the Supreme Court, pleading for protection of its properties and followers after an edict from the Akal Takht asked it to wind up all its activities and campuses in Punjab by May 27.
The apex court said the issue concerned the state government and should be resolved politically. It will hear the sect's plea June 4.
The dera also got into a spat with social activist Swami Agnivesh Friday over the resolution of the current crisis.
Agnivesh, who led an all-religion delegation to the sect headquarters in Sirsa, 300 km from here in Haryana, said the dera management was acting unreasonably and should come out with an offer to end the tensions.
Sect spokesman Aditya Insaan accused Agnivesh of trying to get cheap publicity out of this issue. "He made certain statements to the media which he should not have done," Insaan said.
Agnivesh, who was in touch with dera management and top Sikh leadership in Amritsar, had Thursday said that a resolution of the row was in sight with the dera "ready" for a compromise with an "apology".
The sect management stated that there was "no question of vacating any of its campuses in Punjab".
The sect properties in the state, especially the 150-acre campus at Salabatpura near Bathinda, have been given tight security by Punjab Police and Border Security Force.
Radical Sikhs have warned that if the dera campuses were not vacated by the deadline, they would forcibly get them vacated.
Punjab Director General of Police N.P.S. Aulakh has directed police officials to keep the force on high alert in view of Sunday's deadline.