Australia’s high commissioner to India Harinder Sidhu started her four-day visit to the Indian state of Punjab by paying obeisance at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on Saturday.
Ahead of her visit, High Commissioner Sidhu said, “Australia and India’s northern region enjoy close ties particularly in education, agriculture and sport sectors. A large proportion of Australia’s Indian community comes from the region, and Punjabi is now one of the top 10 languages spoken at home in Australia.”
“This will be my third official visit to Punjab, and I look forward to advancing our cooperation in the agriculture sector,” Ms Sidhu added.
At the Golden Temple, Sidhu performed ‘sewa’ (voluntary service) in the gurudwara community kitchen.
Sidhu told Hindustan Times: “It is very special for me to be here as the high commissioner, having taken birth in a Sikh family.”
Ms Sidhu also visited the partition museum in Amritsar.
During her visit, Ms Sidhu will visit the Borlaug Institute for South Asia in Ludhiana, where she will meet with stakeholders from the state government and the farming community to talk about Happy Seeder – a technology that could help address the environmental issues of stubble burning.
“Happy Seeder is an excellent example of practical cooperation between Australia and India. It was developed by the Punjab Agricultural University and Australian engineers and scientists with support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research a decade ago.”
In Ludhiana, Ms Sidhu will launch two skill development initiatives by UDAY, a social enterprise run by Australian alumnus Param Singh—the Project Mooo App and mobile dairy van.
The Project Mooo App will offer dairy farmers an analytics based learning approach through a user-friendly mobile phone application. The Project Mooo mobile dairy van travels from village to village to provide hands-on skills training, which supports rural women and farmers who face mobility challenges.
On her first official visit to Amritsar, Ms Sidhu was asked about the alleged ban on the entry of Indian officials in a gurdwara in Australia.
Harinder Sidhu (C), Deputy Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was the High Commissioner of Australia in India. Source: Twitter
Hindustan Times reports Ms Sidhu said she was aware of such a development in only one gurdwara and called it an 'internal matter'.
“This, in any case, is an internal matter of respective gurdwara committees,” she said.
