Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has urged the Central and Maharashtra governments to evacuate pilgrims stranded at the gurdwara at Nanded in Maharashtra amid the lockdown to fight the coronavirus.
In a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Captain Amarinder Singh said around 2,000 pilgrims from Punjab who had gone to the Hazur Sahib in Nanded. Hazur Sahib is one of the five spiritual and temporal centres of Sikhism.
With the cancellation of trains some days ago and the nationwide lockdown since Wednesday, they could not be brought to Punjab without the approval of the government of India, he said. He urged the Centre to consider evacuating them by special trains or flights at the earliest.
The Chief Minister wrote on Twitter, “Have written to @AmitShah Ji & Maharashtra CM @OfficeofUT to facilitate the evacuation of devotees stranded at Nanded Sahib Gurdwara. The pilgrims have been stranded there for long & we owe them safe return to their homes & families.”
Earlier, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhadhak Committee (SGPC) urged the Chief Minister to help out the pilgrims stranded at the Hazur Sahib in Nanded and at Takht Sri Patna Sahib in Bihar.
