Indian Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has said he wants to attend the 4th International Punjabi Conference in Lahore, scheduled for November 27-29. Speaking in the Indian Punjab assembly, he said he had been invited by Pakistani Punjabi poet Baba Najmi.
Mann used the moment to take a swipe at India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), questioning whether it would let him travel. "They do not even let me go to France or Japan. How will they let me go to Pakistan?" he said. "I also want to go, because our roots are one, our problems are also similar." People on both sides of the border, he argued, should be able to meet given their shared culture.
Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan backed the idea, urging Mann to take fellow lawmakers with him if the visit is approved.
Mann also called for the Kartarpur corridor to be reopened. The corridor links Dera Baba Nanak in Indian Punjab's Gurdaspur district with Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan, and was suspended indefinitely by Indian authorities on May 7, 2025, after the Pahalgam attack and the hostilities that followed. The brief war between the neighbours ended with a US-brokered ceasefire on May 10, but people-to-people contacts across the border have yet to recover, making an Indian chief minister's wish to visit Lahore a notable gesture.