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AGENCIES / Chandigarh
Congress leader and Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu Tuesday said the Kartarpur Corridor has the potential to erase enmity between India and Pakistan and bring peace in the subcontinent.
Arriving in Pakistan on Tuesday after crossing through the Attari-Wagah joint check post, around 30 km from Amritsar, Sidhu heaped praise on “friend” Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for ensuring that the corridor became a reality.
“The Kartarpur corridor will prove to be a path of peace. It will erase enmity between both countries,” Sidhu told media in Wagah in Pakistan.
Sidhu, who arrived here along with a group of Indian journalists to take part in the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor in Narowal, some 120 km from Lahore, was greeted at the Wagah Border by officials of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
The 4 km-long corridor will connect Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Gurdaspur district with Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib Narowal in Pakistan. The corridor will provide visa-free access to the Indian Sikh pilgrims to the gurdwara.
Sidhu strongly batted for people-to-people and cricketing ties between India and Pakistan despite both the nuclear-armed neighbours who have gone to war earlier having increased tensions in recent years over Pakistan’s support to terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India.
The cricketer-turned-politician tried to steer clear of controversy over his visiting Pakistan despite strained relations between both countries and Indian soldiers being killed in firing from Pakistan side.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh turned down an invite from the Pakistan government to come to Wednesday’s foundation stone laying ceremony saying that the Pakistan Army was killing Indian soldiers and supporting terrorist elements creating trouble in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will on Wednesday lay the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor near the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara, where Sikhism’s founder, Guru Nanak Dev, spent the last 18 years of his life.
The corridor will give access to pilgrims from India, especially from the Sikh community, to visit the gurdwara which has a significant place in Sikh religious history.
It was at the Kartarpur gurdwara, which is located around 2-3 km from the India-Pakistan international border and is situated right opposite the border belt in Dera Baba Nanak in Indian’s Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, that Guru Nanak Dev spent 18 years of his life till he died in 1539.
On Monday, Indian Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Indian Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh laid the foundation stone of the corridor in Gurdaspur