Delhi to send draft pact on Kartarpur to Islamabad within a month

NEW DELHI: India will send a draft agreement for the Kartarpur corridor to Pakistan in four weeks’ time, Punjab chief secretary Karan Avatar Singh told reporters on Tuesday after an hour-long meeting at the Union home ministry.

The corridor will connect Darbar Sahib in Pakistan’s Kartarpur — the final resting place of Sikh faith’s founder Guru Nanak Dev — with Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India’s Gurdaspur district

Among others, the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Besaria, Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba and senior officials of the Punjab government were present in the review meeting.

Kartarpur is located in Shakargarh in Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab. Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, had spent more than 18 years there. The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located on the banks of the Ravi river, about three-four km from the border inside Pakistan.

India has already communicated to Pakistan the coordinates of “Zero Point” for the opening of the Kartarpur corridor, a home ministry official who did not want to be named said. New Delhi also wants members of all faiths to be allowed to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib. The meeting also discussed land acquisition for the highway and for the Integrated Check Post (ICP).

Construction on the corridor in the Pakistani side is expected to finish by end June 2019, but that on the Indian side is expected to take slightly longer. “We are on schedule to put everything together for the celebrations to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev,” the home ministry official said.

The Union home ministry was told that the preliminary notification for land acquisition for the highway has already been issued and the notification to acquire land for ICP will be issued on Wednesday.

The Punjab government has assured that the land will be available by mid-march, the official said.