New Delhi, Oct 12 (PTI) The Congress leadership is “very upset” with former Home Minister P Chidambaram for his remarks on ‘Operation Blue Star’, and is of the view that senior leaders should be careful before making public statements that create embarrassment for the party, party sources said on Sunday.
Chidambaram, while speaking at a literary event in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, on Saturday, said that Operation Blue Star was “wrong” and the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “paid the price with her life for the mistake”.
Party sources said the Congress leadership is of the view that “senior leaders, who have got everything from the Congress party, should be more careful in making statements that create embarrassment for the party. And, this cannot become a habit”.
They said senior leaders should make public statements with care because their repeated statements create problems for the party which is not correct.
“The top party leadership is very upset and the entire party is very upset. The rank and file of the party are agitated about why this is happening repeatedly,” the sources said in the context of Chidambaram, who has, in the recent past too, made some remarks that have caused consternation to the party.
The BJP was quick to attack the Congress after Chidambaram’s remarks on ‘Operation Blue Star’ and said history must record the truth that it was not a national necessity but a “political misadventure” by Indira Gandhi.
Will the Congress now act against Chidambaram “for speaking the truth and exposing their false narrative?” the ruling party asked.
At the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Kasauli, Chidambaram said on Saturday that Operation Blue Star was a “wrong way” to take on the militants.
Chidambaram, a Rajya Sabha MP, while in conversation with journalist and author Harinder Baweja on her book ‘They Will Shoot You Madam: My Life Through Conflict’, said, “There was a way to retrieve and capture all militants but Operation Blue Star was a wrong way and I agree that Mrs Gandhi paid with her life for the mistake but the mistake was cumulative decision of the Army, Intelligence, Police and Civil defense and you cannot completely blame on Mrs Gandhi”.
Operation Blue Star was a military operation undertaken between June 1 and June 10, 1984, against Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale-led armed militants who were holed up on the premises of the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
Earlier in a podcast, Chidambaram had suggested that he personally favoured military retribution against Pakistan following the ghastly 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, but the government led by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh decided to go by the external affairs ministry’s view to resort to diplomatic measures against the neighbouring country.
He noted that world powers, including the US, wanted India not to start a war with Pakistan.
Chidambaram, who was the Union Home Minister then, said in the interview that the entire world had descended on New Delhi to stop it from taking any action against Pakistan in retaliation against the terror strike.
The senior Congress leader also said that the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had asked him and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “not to react”, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a gathering after inaugurating the first phase of the Navi Mumbai International Airport, had attacked the Congress citing Chidambaram’s remarks and said, “A Congress leader, who has also been Union home minister, has stated that a country prevented India’s military retaliation post-26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. The party should clarify”. PTI SKC RT
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