Operation Bluestar: Badal charges Amarinder with misleading people

Pathankot, Feb 10: The war of words between former

Chief Minister

and incumbent

over

seems far from over, with the latter on Monday charging the former with "misleading" the people.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of Sangat Darshan programme of the Bhoa assembly segment here, Badal said before questioning other people, Singh owes an answer to the Punjabis as to why he had become the Chief Minister after joining hands with "the perpetrators of Operation Bluestar".

It was "ironic" that Singh preferred to became the state Congress unit's president and the CM despite the fact that his party had given "a severe blow to Sikh psyche by attacking Sri Darbar Sahib and killing thousands of innocent Sikhs in the carnage of 1984", he said.

Badal claimed, on the contrary, he was put behind the bars by successive Congress governments as he had vehemently opposed any move of the Centre against Punjab and Punjabis. The Chief Minister said he had thought that Singh would have learnt lessons from his rejection by the voters of the state time and again, but his recent utterances had proved that "a leopard cannot change its spots".

"Everyone knows that the state has been a victim of the continuous anti-Punjab tirades by the Centre and Singh was just misleading the people to score brownie points," he said. Singh had yesterday rubbished Badal's claim that he was in jail at the time of Operation Bluestar, and said "either he has lost his memory or is deliberately lying to mislead the people".

Singh had said he would release documents in due course of time to establish that Badal was "very much a free man before and after Operation Bluestar and was arrested much later".

PTI