The visa-free 4.7 km long Kartarpur Corridor reopened on Wednesday.
Gurdaspur:
Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Saturday expressed happiness over the reopening of the Kartarpur Corridor and said it was made possible by the efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan.
Mr Sidhu made the remarks at a press conference in Punjab’s Gurdaspur after returning from a visit to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan.
“The reopening of the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor has been possible due to the efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan,” Sidhu said.
“I request that if you want to change lives in Punjab, we should open the borders (for cross-border trade). Why should we go through Mundra port, a total of 2,100 km? Why not from here, where it is only 21 km is (for Pakistan),” he said.
His visit comes after fresh tussle in the Punjab Congress after Sidhu’s name was dropped from a delegation of state cabinet ministers that visited Kartarpur Sahib on Thursday led by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi.
The visa-free 4.7-km Kartarpur Corridor, connecting Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, with the Dera Baba Nanak temple in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, reopened on Wednesday. The corridor, which became operational in 2019, was closed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier, Pakistan’s Imran Khan government had praised Sidhu’s role in opening the corridor to the Sikh pilgrimage site Kartarpur Sahib.
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