Summary:
These left him unfit to perform his duties and had led him to offer his resignation from the post. The typed letter did not have his signature, but instead had the name of his personal assistant Satinder Pal Singh.No SGPC official confirmed the jathedar’s resignation and all Akal Takht personnel, including the jathedar himself were incommunicado after the letter was circulated to the media. The hukumnama (edict) was withdrawn in less than a month on October 16, 2015. There was speculation that the jathedar was being made a scapegoat for the growing anger against the Akalis over the Dera chief’s pardon and the incidents of sacrilege and their fallout.Born on April 6, 1948, in Muktsar’s Chakk Baja village, Gurbachan Singh was appointed the Akal Takht Jathedar in 2008.In his resignation letter, Gurbachan Singh wrote that he was facing various health ailments. The jathedar, they felt, had failed to conduct due diligence into the issue and that had led to spiraling of anger against Sikh institutions such as the SGPC, Akal Takht and the Shiromani Akali Dal.About the controversial pardon to the Dera chief, the jathedar said that keeping in view the sentiments of the Panth, the decision to pardon him had been reversed immediately..