Chandigarh: The Punjab Legislative Assembly’s special session on Monday, April 13, 2026, was marked by sharp political confrontations as the ruling and opposition benches clashed over the history of sacrilege cases in the state. While the landmark bill—which proposes life imprisonment for religious desecration—was eventually passed with unanimous support, the preceding debate exposed deep-seated political divisions. The session, which began with tributes to departed souls, quickly turned into a high-voltage face-off between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress-led opposition.
Leader of the Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa offered conditional support to the legislation but questioned the government’s long-term execution plan. He raised concerns regarding the potential for the bill to be stalled at the central level for Presidential assent and sought clarity on the status of departmental actions against officials involved in the 2015 Bargari and Kotkapura firing incidents. Bajwa also demanded a roadmap for the resolution of nearly 550 pending sacrilege-related cases, questioning if the new law would have a retrospective impact on ongoing trials.
Responding to the queries, the ruling party defended its record, asserting that it had taken unprecedented legal steps, including filing chargesheets against senior figures like former Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal and former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini. Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema further intensified the debate by bringing up the 1986 Nakodar incident, accusing past regimes of suppressing inquiry reports for decades. Despite the verbal fireworks and emotional testimony from legislators regarding past victims, all parties eventually set aside differences to approve the bill, prioritizing the need for a stringent deterrent against religious desecration.
