Why is it in the News?

Delhi LG V K Saxena recently recommended a (NIA) probe against jailed Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal for allegedly receiving political funding from Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a New York-based pro-Khalistan organisation that is banned in India.

What is Sikhs for Justice (SfJ)?

• Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) formed in 2007, is a US-based group seeking a separate homeland for Sikhs, a “Khalistan” in Punjab.
• Its founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a law graduate from Panjab University and currently an attorney at law in the US, is the face of SFJ and its legal adviser.
• Panun had launched the secessionist Sikh Referendum 2020 campaign, an initiative that eventually became defunct.
  • He was among the nine individuals designated as “terrorists” by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
• ‘Referendum 2020’, claimed it wanted to “liberate Punjab from Indian occupation”.
• In Pannun’s words, “SFJ in its London Declaration (in August 2018) had announced to hold the first-ever non-binding referendum among the global Sikh community on the question of secession from India and re-establishing Punjab as an independent country.”

Banned in India:

• India refers to Gurpatwant Singh Pannun as a terrorist, and has banned SFJ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
• The Home Ministry’s 2019 notification issuing the ban says: “In the garb of the so-called referendum for Sikhs, SFJ is actually espousing secessionism and militant ideology in Punjab, while operating from safe havens on foreign soils and actively supported by inimical forces in other countries.”
• Currently, almost a dozen cases are registered against Pannun and SFJ in India.