Chandigarh, April 8
Former Education Minister and MLA Pargat Singh, addressing a press conference at Punjab Congress Bhavan, categorically charged that the Punjab Government’s intent on delivering justice in sacrilege cases remains deeply questionable. He asserted that the announcement of a special session on April 13 to enact a new sacrilege law is nothing but a brazen attempt to mislead the people of Punjab and evade accountability in the 2015 sacrilege cases.
“The government is moving to pass an amendment to the 2008 Act — ‘The Punjab Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (Printing Press and Publication) Act, 2008’ — while projecting it as an entirely new legislation, a move that will yield no substantive benefit whatsoever”, said Pargat. He condemned this as a reckless and ill-conceived decision, stressing that comprehensive consultation with religious scholars and experts across all faiths was an absolute prerequisite before tabling any such legislation. He noted that Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann has evidently bypassed all such due process entirely.
Pargat underscored that instead of tinkering with the 2008 Act, the Mann government ought to have directed its energies toward securing passage of the 2018 amended legislation, which already incorporates all the stringent penal provisions the Chief Minister now publicly champions. He further pointed out that the 2018 Bill stood a far greater chance of receiving Central government assent. “In stark contrast, once criminal provisions are inserted into the 2008 Act through the proposed amendment, it would fall squarely under the Concurrent List, thereby necessitating Presidential assent under Article 254 — the very approval that was denied to the 2018 legislation,” he added.
Pargat further revealed that the AAP government had itself introduced a fresh proposal — ‘The Punjab Prevention of Offences Against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025’ — in July 2025, only for Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to unceremoniously abandon it without explanation. “The Assembly had referred the Bill to a Select Committee owing to several substantive deficiencies, yet the Committee’s report has never been made public”, he said, while demanding that the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly should immediately requisition the Select Committee’s report and place it in the public domain, so that the identified shortcomings of the 2025 Bill could be addressed with expert guidance and the legislation steered in the right direction.
