NEW DELHI/ CHANDIGARH, July 4:
Jailed radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh and Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdul Rashid are set to take oath as Lok Sabha members on Friday, subject to some conditions in their parole orders.
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While Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, is in Delhi’s Tihar jail in a terror funding case registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Singh is lodged in a prison in Assam’s Dibrugarh district for offences under the National Security Act.
Singh, 31, and Rashid, 56, won the recent Lok Sabha elections from Khadoor Sahib in Punjab and Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir, respectively, as Independents while being incarcerated.
They could not take oath as members of the 18th Lok Sabha on June 24 and 25 along with the other winning candidates.
For taking oath, Rashid has been granted a two-hour custody parole, excluding the travel time from Tihar to Parliament, and Singh a four-day custody parole, beginning July 5, as he will be flown in from Assam to Delhi and back.
During their parole periods, they can neither speak to or address the media on any issue or make any statements. Their family members also cannot make a statement in any form of media, according to their respective orders.
While Singh, a Khalistani sympathiser who heads the ‘Waris Punjab De’ outfit, has been allowed to meet his family in Delhi, Rashid’s family can only attend his oath taking.
The parole for Rashid, who has been in jail since 2019 after his arrest in 2017, was granted by a court in Delhi and that of Singh by the district magistrate of Amritsar from where he was arrested in April 2023 for barging into a police station in February and clashing with police personnel in a bid to free one of his aides from custody. (PTI)
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