Badal govt misleading Centre on Bluestar memorial: Punjab Cong

The Punjab Congress today reiterated its demand that the state government should clarify its stand on the Operation Bluestar memorial, saying that the Akali-BJP regime was "keeping the union home ministry in the dark" on the issue.

The Punjab Congress on Wednesday reiterated its demand that the state government should clarify its stand on the Operation Bluestar memorial, saying that the Akali-BJP regime was "keeping the union home ministry in the dark" on the issue.

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In a statement issued here, state Congress general secretary Arvind Khanna asked the government to come clean on the status of the memorial and its stand on it, in the backdrop of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) declaring the upcoming monument as a "memorial against army action in June 1984".

Khanna claimed that the state government, in contrast, had intimated to the Centre that the first phase of the memorial, declared as completed, was "a gurdwara".

"The Punjab government is trying to fool people of the state as it is trying to keep the union government in the dark about the facts by saying that it is not a memorial but a gurdwara," he said.

Khanna stated that when the Punjab Congress leadership took up the matter with union home minister P Chidambaram, they were surprised to learn that chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had told the union minister that no memorial dedicated to anybody was coming up inside the Golden Temple complex.