Kartarpur Corridor shut from India’s side indefinitely, Pak keeps doors open

Following escalating border tensions between India and Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22, India has closed its side of the Kartarpur Corridor — the only active surface-level link between the two countries — indefinitely.

The Union ministry of home affairs’ bureau of immigration announced the closure of the corridor “till further orders”.

The closure has halted the pilgrimage of Indian Sikh devotees to the historic Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Narowal district, Pakistan, while Pakistan continues to keep the corridor open on its side.

On Wednesday morning, around 150 Sikh pilgrims who had arrived at the Dera Baba Nanak integrated check post in Gurdaspur district were turned back after waiting for over 90 minutes.

In contrast, Pakistan has maintained that the Kartarpur Corridor remains open on its end.

Ramesh Singh Arora, president of the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PSGPC) and a former MLA, appointed as ambassador for the corridor, said, “The corridor is open from our side. It is a conscious decision of our government to continue welcoming the pilgrims.”

He added that the corridor was a symbol of peace, brotherhood and harmony propagated by Guru Nanak Dev. “On Tuesday, we received about 200 pilgrims from India and suddenly, the next day, the arrival was zero. When we checked, we were told that India had stopped pilgrims from going to Kartarpur Corridor. Despite the corridor’s close down from India’s side, the Pakistan government has decided to keep it open as a goodwill gesture,” Arora told HT over WhatsApp.

He added that PSGPC had also started the process for facilitating pilgrimage visas to Indian pilgrims for June to mark the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev.

The corridor, inaugurated jointly by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on November 9, 2019, fulfilled a long-standing demand of the Sikh community to access one of their holiest shrines without a visa.

Under the bilateral agreement, Indian devotees have visa-free, dawn-to-dusk access to the shrine, which has turned out be a meeting point of people from Indian and Pakistan Punjabs, divided since the Partition of 1947.

The 4.7-km passage connects Dera Baba Nanak Sahib in India’s Gurdaspur and Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan’s Kartarpur, believed to be the final resting place of Guru Nanak Dev.

Despite its brief closure during the Covid-19 pandemic after just four months of inauguration, the corridor was reopened on November 17, 2021, and both countries renewed the agreement for another five years in 2024.