While Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal launched an attack on his predecessor Amarinder Singh over the clean chit to Jagdish Tytler in the 1984 Sikh riots case, the latter on Monday rapped the evasive silence of the CM for his role in Operation Bluestar.
Shiromani Akali Dal workers staged protests outside the Congress headquarters in Delhi after Amarinder gave a clean chit to Jagdish Tytler.
Earlier Badal had described as ‘shameful and shocking in the extreme’, the clean chit given to Tytler, who was among the “‘prime accused’ in the November 1984 Sikh riots.
Retorting in kind, Amarinder asked the CM to tell the people of Punjab, particularly of Amritsar, what transpired between him and the then Union Home Minister P V Narasimha Rao on March 26, 1984. “Your evasive silence will only establish your guilt of not only having betrayed your leader, but the people you were supposed to represent”, he told Badal.
He said, he had been asking Badal for the last six months to reveal what transpired in that secret meeting but he kept quiet. “Is it not a fact that during that secret meeting on March 26, 1984, you requested Rao to send military to the Darbar Sahab to flush out the militants led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale as you were fatally scared of him?” he asked Badal, also questioning his intention behind meeting Rao alone when he was not authorised to do so.
Amarinder who resigned from the Congress and the Parliament to protest against the Operation Bluestar, asked the reason behind Badal’s disappearance on May 26, 1984, nine days ahead of the planned operation. “Why did you skip all the important meetings Sant Longowal had called at the Golden temple,” he asked Badal, adding, “it was clearly your guilty conscience which prevented you from attending that meeting as you knew that you had already given your nod for military operation”.
Earlier Badal had said, “Even your children and grandchildren will be ashamed of what you did and all the coming generations will never be able to forgive you for this. Only you know the reason behind this historic betrayal of an innocent and wronged community.”