Jagir Kaur

Bibi Jagir Kaur is the first woman to be elected for the second time as the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), an organisation that manages historic Sikh shrines and some educational institutions in the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Ms. Kaur's name was put forward by the senior Akali leader, Sukhdev Singh Bhaur, and seconded by another SGPC member, Harswinder Singh. There were no other contenders. She had held the same post from March 1999 to November 2000, when she resigned. The post became vacant since the death of the Akali stalwart, Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who served for 26 terms. He died in March, 2004 after a brief illness.

Politics

Jagir Kaur is an active member of the Shiromani Akali Dal, a Sikh political party with a strong following in Punjab. She joined the party in 1995 and was shortly thereafter appointed member of the party's working committee. In 1997, she was elected from the Bholath constituency in Kapurthala district. She was appointed Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister in addition to holding the portfolios of social welfare, development of women and children welfare in the Parkash Singh Badal Cabinet. She resigned the post of minister when she was appointed as the President of the SGPC. Her rise was meteoric, rising from the position of a teacher in Mathematics to the post of President of the SGPC.