AMRITSAR SAHIB, Punjab—On December 19, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee had announced to start a free bus service from Amritsar to Dera Baba Nanak in the first meeting of the present Executive committee at Fatehgarh Sahib last year. This was announced to facilitate the pilgrims visiting Sri Kartarpur Sahib.
However, to date, this announcement remains on paper only and there is no sign of the SGPC implementing a bus service.
In December last year, the Shiromani Committee had announced that the free bus will depart from Gurdwara Sahib Saragari (Heritage route) at 8:00 am every day and it will arrive back in Amritsar from Dera Baba Terminal at 5:00 pm. This announcement was made seeing a huge rush of pilgrims to Sri Kartarpur Sahib and the lack of public transportation available to facilitate their pilgrim.
After two and a half months, still, this announcement has been proved deceptive.
It is pertinent to note that the pilgrims who visit Kartarpur Sahib through Dera Baba Nanak corridor have to reach Dera Baba Nanak Terminal by 9:00 am and for this, pilgrims from various villages and cities of Punjab and from other states reach Sri Harmandir Sahib a day before and stay during night here and reach Dera Baba Nanak on next morning by taking expensive taxis.
At the time of the announcement, the Shiromani Committee officials had also said that unless a new bus was purchased for this purpose, another bus would be used.
Speaking with Sikh24, an SGPC official who wished to remain anonymous said, “The bus service will be started surely as announced by the ‘Shiromani Committee’. There has been a drop in sangat that visits Kartarpur Sahib due to issues with visa stamping so the priority has lowered.”
It is however not known if the visits to Sri Kartarpur Sahib have decreased due to lack of transportation or for other reasons.
