Centre in wait & watch mode in Punjab

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, February 25

The BJP-led Centre is adopting a cautious, wait and watch policy on the unfolding situation in Punjab with the powers that be acutely conscious of the “mistake late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made by dismissing the Akali Dal government in the state in February 1980.”

Law & order responsibility of state

Punjab history is replete with lessons. We are waiting and watching. Maintaining law and order is essentially the responsibility of the state government. An official source

Indira, who returned to power after three years of the Janata Party government, on February 18, 1980, resorted to the dismissal of Assemblies in nine states ruled by the opposition parties. These states included Punjab which was witnessing an upheaval amid a consistent rise of radical preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

By then the tension was already raging in the aftermath of the Sikh-Nirankari clash of April 1978 in Amritsar and the subsequent January 1980 acquittal of Nirankari sect chief Baba Gurbachan Singh and 60 others who had been prosecuted for killings of 13 persons in the 1978 clash.

In April 1980, Gurbachan Singh was killed at his Delhi residence. Though Bhindranwale was named in the probe, nothing came out of it.

The dismissal of the Punjab Government in February 1980 followed by the June 1980 installation of Congress CM Darbara Singh triggered a series of events that plunged the state deeper into crisis.

Things came to such a pass that in October 1983, Indira had to impose President’s Rule in Punjab, a historical milestone from where Punjab was to go further downhill on the road to religious strife.

The road took a tragic turn with the June 1, 1984, entry of the Army into the Golden Temple in a bid to purge the holiest Sikh shrine of militants including Bhindranwale, who was eliminated. However, the former PM’s decision to order ‘Operation Bluestar’ continued to be debated long after her. “Punjab history is replete with lessons. We are waiting and watching. Maintaining law and order is essentially the responsibility of the state government,” an official source said today, even as the sudden entry of Amritpal Singh onto Punjab’s landscape remained shrouded in mystery.