The Fact News Service
Chandigarh, August 20
Taking the sensitive issue of sacrilege of religious scriptures seriously, the Punjab Government has introduced a draft law to prevent sacrilege of religious scriptures – “The Punjab Prevention of Offences against Holy Scriptures Bill, 2025” in the Legislative Assembly, in this connection the Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan has constituted a Select Committee under the Chairmanship of Inderbir Singh Nijjar who is holding meetings every week to discuss this issue by getting people’s opinions. Advertisements have been made in various newspapers on 31.7.2025 and 14.8.2025 to seek suggestions from the public and the committee is receiving a lot of suggestions from the public.
The committee meeting held on 12.8.2025 was attended by experts from Punjabi University, Patiala- Dr. Jaspreet Kaur Sandhu, Department of Sikhism, Dr. Gurmeet Singh Sidhu, Department of Religion, Dr. Dharamvir Singh, Department of Sikhism, Dr. Gurmail Singh, Dr. Jaswinder Singh and Dr. Tejinder Kaur, Department of Religious Studies. They discussed the issue with the committee and gave their valuable suggestions.
In today’s meeting of the Select Committee, experts of religious studies from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar – Prof. Amarjit Singh, Head Sikh Studies, Chairman Dr. Syed Raihan Hasan Rizvi, Urdu Persian Department, Prof. Sunil Kumar, Head Hindi Department, Prof. Pawan Kumar, Law Department, Dr. Pintu Emerson, Department of Architecture, and Prof. Satnam Singh Deol, Head, Department of Political Science were present. They discussed this issue with the committee and gave their valuable suggestions regarding the bill.
The committee thanked all these Subject Experts. All the members including the chairman were present in the meeting of the select committee.
The committee has also requested the President, Bar Association and Chairman Bar Council, Punjab and Haryana High Court to give their suggestions in its next meeting to be held on 26.8.2025. The committee has also requested retired judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court to provide their suggestions in writing to us.
