The calendar was designed by Pal Singh Purewal, a Canada based Sikh scholar, and adopted by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 2003 as the official calendar for the historic gurdwaras it administers, including the Golden Temple at Amritsar, framed at the time as a marker of Sikh calendrical independence from the Bikrami system associated with Hindu practice. The reform did not hold unopposed.
A coalition of traditionalist bodies, the Sant Samaj among them, together with the Damdami Taksal, argued that several gurpurabs had always been reckoned by lunar tithis under the Bikrami calendar and should stay that way regardless of the new solar reform, and by 2009 they were pressing the case through the Shiromani Akali Dal, the political party aligned with the SGPC. Under that pressure the SGPC issued a revised version of the calendar in 2010, restoring Bikrami based dates for a number of festivals, including some Guru anniversaries and Bandi Chhor Divas, while retaining the fixed solar dating for Vaisakhi and the calendar's basic month structure. The result is that two documents both called the Nanakshahi calendar have circulated since 2010, the original 2003 design still published by Purewal and diaspora organisations that consider the revision a retreat, and the SGPC's amended 2010 version, alongside a third position that rejects the Nanakshahi reform altogether and keeps every Sikh date on the Bikrami calendar.