VANCOUVER – The long battle for control of the Khalsa Diwan Society Vancouver is finally heading to court.
Sikh Sangat Seva Society will seek an injunction for a stay on the election process at the Ross Street Gurdwara on December 15. The reason for the delay in the proceedings was the result of vast amounts of information exchange.
“The current executive took the maximum time to respond to the charges. As well, ‘delay tactics’ were flooded with hundreds of pages of information that do not address any issue but rather cause confusion and is time consuming,” complained Sikh Sangat Society in a press release. “They want the case heard in 2015 so that they can implement their new executive whom they say ran un-opposed even though the lawyers exchanges and personal servings states otherwise. “
Sikh Sangat wants things to stay as they are until all issues are resolved which is likely to be in March of 2015 in a full week trial.
Issues at stake are the memberships registered to individuals that do not exist, multiple memberships for some individual members, collecting membership forms from people’s homes and flooding their support, along with stacking hundreds of memberships the day before an independent body was appointed two months before the deadline along with various breaches of the constitution and the election process, allege Sikh Sangat Seva Society.
“The independent observer should have been in place at the start of the drive not at the end when they had all their members registered. Our supporters were scrutinized while many of their supporters did not even have to come to the Gurdwara for submission,” said Sikh Sangat.
A judge in a previous judgment stated that “if the election process is not fair then how can the election be fair”.
“In the name of the Lord at least speak the truth and put a fair process in place. Let the people decide fairly and accept their verdict instead of manipulating it. There should never be lawyers or courts involved in Gurdwara matters. We can solve our own problems. There is still time to avoid the litigation and fix the mess that has been created. We will change the constitution so that no executive will be able to use Gurdwara donations as this group is doing,” Sikh Sangat said.
Until then, the current process will continue to burn your donations and a fair process is only likely to take place under the command of the courts.
Additionally, there is criticism that community needs to wake up and stop manipulating the outcome of elections in multiple faiths in the Indo-Canadian community.
