Chandigarh: SAD (Punar Surjit) president and former acting Akal Takht jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh on Saturday questioned the selective release of a video of Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann‘s appearance before the Akal Takht in January, saying it was “neither appropriate nor fair” and risked undermining the institution’s credibility.Reacting to the release of excerpts from the proceedings held inside the Akal Takht secretariat, Harpreet Singh said selective clips presented facts in an incomplete manner, created confusion among the Sikh community and affected the “dignity, sanctity and credibility” of the Akal Takht.In a post on X, he said a similar incident had occurred during his tenure as acting jathedar when only selected portions of one of his videos were made public and later used to create a misleading narrative. “When only carefully chosen excerpts of a conversation are released instead of the complete discussion, the truth becomes obscured and the Sangat is deprived of the full context necessary to form an informed opinion,” he said.Harpreet Singh maintained that videos of discussions inside the Akal Takht secretariat should, in principle, not be made public. However, if there was a compelling reason to release them, the entire recording and not selected clips should have been put in the public domain. He also sought a clarification from the Akal Takht secretariat on how such selective videos were being released and under whose authorisation.The Akal Takht on Saturday released a video of Mann’s appearance before it on Jan 15 in connection with the purported objectionable clip, days after declaring the chief minister a “Guru Dokhi” and “Khalsa Panth Virodhi” over the controversy.BoxVideo exposes false narrative: AAP; Mann had no objection, replies SADAAP Punjab media in-charge Baltej Pannu said the footage had “completely exposed the false narrative and misinformation campaign” allegedly run by the Shiromani Akali Dal over the purported clip. He said the video showed Mann had categorically told the Akal Takht that the person seen in the viral clip was not him and that the video was fake. Pannu further claimed that two separate forensic examinations of more than 1,100 frames had established that the individual in the video did not match the chief minister.Shiromani Akali Dal chief spokesperson Arshdeep Singh Kler, however, said Mann had told the Akal Takht during his deposition that he had no objection to a forensic examination as he believed the videos were fake and AI-generated. Kler claimed that forensic reports had subsequently found the videos to be genuine and alleged that the AAP government had changed its stand by arguing that the person seen in the clip was not Mann. He said the chief minister should accept the Akal Takht’s verdict and submit to it instead of creating an atmosphere of confrontation with the institution.
