AMRITSAR: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) Wednesday presented its charter of demands before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Golden Temple on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today visited the Golden Temple on Wednesday morning for paying obeisance. Unlike his last visit SGPC had not made any special arrangement to welcome him. Manmohan Singh was honored with a Siropa (rob of honour) at the sanctum sanctorum of Golden Temple.
 
In their charter of demands SGPC urged Dr. Manmohan Singh to abolished the black list in which many of innocent Sikh living abroad were listed the reason better known to the government. SGPC requested Indian government to review the cases of innocent Sikhs favorably and sympathetically.
 
SGPC also urged PM for an amendment in the Sikh Gurdwara Act 1925 to provide 10 co-options of Sikh members from abroad in SGPC so the representatives of 50 lacs Sikhs living in various countries could be taken in the body.
 
SGPC demand from Manmohan Singh to ask his UK counterpart to return articles including Kohinoor diamond, kalgi of Guru Gobind Singh, chair of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, which have immense significance to Sikhs. Presently these articles are lying in a museum in UK.

SGPC once again urge Prime Minster to give operational rights of Amritsar- Lahore and Amritsar –Nankana Sahib bus to them besides setting up of visa center at Amritsar. Another important demand of Sikhs is of providing corridor to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, Pakistan from Dera Baba Nanak in India. Pakistan had verbally  offered to provide corridor, a distance of nearly two and half kilometer ,  for the Sikh devotees to visit Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib and return on the same day.
 
SGPC also express its resentment against haphazard construction activities in the vicinity of Golden Temple. Other demands includes taking up the issue of stationing of granthi's in the Gurdwara's of Bangladesh, karsewa of Gurdwara's of Afghanistan, release of Sikhs detained in jails of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
 
Advocating the case of Prof. Davinder pal Singh Bhullar, who has been awarded death sentence by the apex court at Delhi, on account of his alleged conspiracy in a bomb blast out side the youth congress office in Delhi in 1993, SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar requested Dr. Manmohan Singh that Prof. Bhullar is being condemned on account of something, regarding which there is no direct evidence but the evidence collected by the prosecution has been framed in such manner to seek the conviction of a Sikh gentleman who may other wise be innocent.
SGPC president Makkar requested that :I, on behalf of the entire Sikh community appeal you highness to use your influence to commute the harshest penalty of death sentence awarded to Prof. Bhullar to lesser sentence and thus help to restore the confidence of the emotionally shattered Sikh community.