No direct flights between Canada and India irk Punjabis: SGPC

India and Canada have recently proposed a new bilateral air services agreement about Canada to India flights that gives unlimited access to each other’s cities. But the news doesn’t sound music to Punjabis and SGPC, the head body of Sikh religious affairs.

The agreement which gives access to six Indian cities to Canadian Airlines does not include Amritsar as one of the cities. This particularly has irked the sentiments of Punjabis and SGPC.

The SGPC spokesperson and general secretary Gurcharan Singh Grewal said, “this is the discriminatory attitude towards Guru Nagari Amritsar”. He further said “there is resentment among the Sikhs in India and abroad. Under the agreement, airports have been included for flights from many cities in India but Punjabis and especially Sikhs have been discriminated against by ignoring flights to Amritsar from Canada”.

During the budget session of the SGPC earlier in march this year led by SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami, a special resolution was passed for demanding direct flights from Amritsar and was sent to the concerned ministries of the government of India but the government did not give its due share of flights to Punjab. This is completely unfair to Punjabis, he said.

Grewal further said that large numbers of Punjabis live all over the globe, especially in Canada. These people when traveling to their home state Punjab face many problems. They have to bear the loss of valuable time and also have to bear the substantial financial cost of traveling to Punjab via Delhi. He also appealed to prime minister Narendra Modi that a due share of international flights should be given to Punjab.

Meanwhile, the global convenor of the FlyAmritsar initiative, Sameep Singh and his north American counterpart Anantdeep Singh said that the new bilateral agreement between two countries only changes the number of Canada to India flights and that can operate from 35 to unlimited but it doesn’t benefit the Canadian Punjabi community that has been pressing for international flights from Canada since long.

But under the new agreement, Canadian carriers are restricted to operate direct flights to only 6 major metro cities in India. The other cities need to be served indirectly through code-share services with Indian airlines. Even if any Canadian carrier wishes to operate direct flight from Canada to Amritsar, it still will not be able to due to constraints put up by the new agreement, the convenor said over the phone.

Anantdeep further added “earlier in the year, over 19000 Canadian citizens and permanent residents signed an official parliament of Canada petition urging the governments to assist in starting direct flights from Canada to Amritsar. While working on the petition, the demand had also come up during the talks between the Canadian transport minister Omar alghabra and india’s civil aviation minister jyotiraditya Scindia on may 4.

He again said that it is clearly unfortunate that despite the strong demand by million strong Punjabi community in Canada, the name is still missing from the list in a complete disregard to the Punjabi sentiment. The years-long awaited demand and sentiment of Punjabi diaspora in Canada is once again being ignored by either Canadian or Indian government.