Pakistan issues 2,200 visas to Sikhs to attend festival

KARACHI, Pakistan

Islamabad issued visas to more than 2,000 Indian Sikhs to participate in a key religious festival to be held in northeast Pakistan later this month, according to ministry.

Thousands of Sikhs from across the world will attend Baisakhi celebrations -- an annual festival to commemorate the birth of Sikhism as a collective faith in 1699.

Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi announced it issued visas to 2,200 Indian Sikhs to attend the festival from April 12 - 21.

Sikh pilgrims will visit sacred places, mainly northeastern Nankana Sahib district -- the birthplace of the founder of Sikh religion, Baba Guru Nanak Devji, Punja Sahib in Hassan Abdal district and Kartarpur temple where Baba Guru Nanak spent the last 18 years of his life.

The development came in the to mounting tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals in recent weeks following combat in which two Indian fighter jets were shot down by the Pakistan Air Force, and an Indian pilot was captured in February. The pilot was later released.

Fraught relations between the two sides further spiked last week when Islamabad accused New Delhi of planning “more military action” against Pakistan this month, a charge India denied.

Islamabad and New Delhi last November to open Kartarpur border crossing for Sikh pilgrims ahead of the 550th anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak, to be held later this year in Pakistan.

Pakistan has already announced it would celebrate the event at the government level.

Pakistan’s northeastern Punjab province is home to the five most important pilgrimage sites for Sikhs, which include the birthplace of Baba Guru Nanak, who was born in 1469 in Nankana Sahib district, and Gurdwara, or monastery, Punja in Hasan Abdal town, where the handprint of Guru Nanak is believed to be imprinted on a boulder at the monastery.

The country is also home to several other holy Sikh sites which attract a large number of community members from all around the world.

The number of Sikhs in Pakistan is estimated between 30,000 and 40,000 out of a 210 million population in the South Asian Muslim country.

Local Sikhs population is 60,000 to 80,000.