MT Desk: On April 20, the city authorities forcibly sealed the shop in Amritsar’s Hall Gate Fish Market, allegedly without giving him any notice. “This has been our source of livelihood since the time of my grandfather,” said 39-year-old Gulati. The action was based on a Punjab government notification that disallowed the sale of meat, alcohol, cigarettes and tobacco within the walled City of Amritsar, in effect the area around the Golden Templ. The order followed the Aam Aadmi Party government’s decision in November last year to declare three cities – Amritsar, Anandpur Sahib and Talwandi Sabo – as holy cities.

Gulati said more than 250 businesses, including small meat vendors, food carts and wholesalers have been affected by the decision in Amritsar alone. “We have been sitting idle since then,” said Gulati. “The government should have given us some alternate space to run our businesses.” On May 29, Gulati moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court, challenging the legality of the closure. “The notifications have no statutory backing,” said advocate Vikas Chathrath, his legal counsel. The petition questioned the state’s power “either to declare an area as a ‘holy city’ or to prohibit an otherwise lawful and licensed trade within municipal limits” in the absence of “any enabling act, statutory provision, regulation, bye-law or delegated legislative instrument.”

The Punjab and Haryana High Court issued a notice to the Punjab government, asking for its response. The legal challenge aside, critics of the Punjab government’s decision say this falls into a pattern of the AAP government trying to cash in on sentiments around the Sikh religion. “It is totally a political decision,” said Dr Amarjit Singh, former head of the department of Guru Nanak Studies at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. The demand for a holy city tag for Amritsar was once championed by Punjab’s Sikh-centric party Akali Dal, while Khalistan ideologue and hardliner Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had campaigned for a ban on tobacco in the city.