Assembly refers Anti-sacrilege Bill to Select Committee of MLAs

The Punjab Vidhan Sabha today unanimously decided to refer the Punjab Prevention of Offences against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025, to a Select Committee of MLAs so that it discusses the provisions of the Bill with all stakeholders, which, if found tenable, will be included in the Bill.

The decision was taken after a three-and-a-half hour debate on the state government’s much-awaited Anti sacrilege Bill.

This Bill was tabled in the House yesterday by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, and came up for discussion today.

After Mann concluded the debate on the Bill, he recommended that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee, comprising MLAs of all political parties, “… so as to get feedback from the 3.50 crore Punjabis. Let the Committee take four months to consult people and religious leaders, as it is their Bill,” he said, adding that the Committee would be like a Parliamentary Standing Committee. He promised that the government would ensure life imprisonment to guilty, as these incidents created disharmony in the state.

Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan said the Select Committee would come back with the suggestions it received from the public on this extremely emotive issue within a maximum of six months. When CM Mann asked if the Committee could submit its report in four months, Sandhwan said he had set six months as the upper limit. Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa agreed with him and said that this Committee should not take longer than six months. Following this, the proposal was passed unanimously by all legislators.

During the debate on this emotive issue, while the MLAs on the Treasury benches blamed the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and its leaders for the sacrilege incidents of 2015, and accused the Congress of not naming the Badals — late Parkash Singh Badal and SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal — as accused in any of the chargesheets filed by them in these cases, the Opposition party MLAs accused the government of failing to defend the cases properly, which led to the case being transferred outside Punjab.

Leader of Opposition Bajwa demanded clear timelines to ensure accountability in such sensitive investigations. “These should be complete within 30 days. An extension of 15 days can be given by the SSP and any further extension be given only by the DGP. No ammunition should be used against people protesting against sacrilege. You had promised to act on the report of the SIT headed by the former cop and now your own party MLA, Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh within 24 hours of assuming power. Now your party has been in power for 1,144 days. But your party later suspended him for five years when he raised these issues. Once your poster boy, he was discarded without hesitation,” he said.

AAP President and minister Aman Arora pointed fingers at the previous SAD-BJP and Congress governments for not naming Badals in the chargesheets and said that the AAP government-appointed SIT had done so. Education Minister Harjot Bains said the two parties were in collusion to save each other.

Congress MLA Pargat Singh sought accountability of the AAP government for not giving prosecution sanction of an acused head of a religious dera in the case. Even during the Congress regime, there was a group of people who did politics on the issue and delayed investigations. When AAP MLAs Amritpal Sukhanand and Gurpreet Singh Banawali sougfht the names of these persons, Pargat refused to do so.

SAD MLA Dr Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi demanded that those who commit sacrilege of leaders like Dr B R Ambedkar too should be booked on these charges of sacrilege.

BJP MLAs Ashwani Sharma and Jangi Lal Mahajan supported the Bill and said that those desecrating idols of Gods and Goddesses should also be booked under the new Act. `

  Report on suggestions in 6 months

“The Committee will come back with the suggestions it received from the public on this extremely emotive issue within a maximum of six months.”-Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Speaker

Punjab