Hours after Gandhi visited the families of the victims, SAD leaders, including MPs Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Balwinder Singh Bhundur, said it was condemnable that the Congress Vice President was "playing politics over two tragic deaths
Ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Thursday attacked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after he visited families of two persons killed in recent police firing, saying he was playing politics over tragic deaths and questioned his failure to seek forgiveness for Bluestar Operation and 1984 riots.
Hours after Gandhi visited the families of the victims, SAD leaders, including MPs Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Balwinder Singh Bhundur, said it was condemnable that the Congress Vice President was "playing politics over two tragic deaths even as he failed to atone for the sins of his party and his family which was responsible for sending tanks into the Darbar Sahab and engineering the worst human genocide of the modern world in 1984 in Delhi." The senior Akali leaders said "it was known that successive generations of the Gandhi family had never left an opportunity to denigrate Sikh institutions and their principles.
"Now another Gandhi scion has come to divide and damage Punjab and Punjabis by using the issue of unfortunate desecrations of the holy book to revive his party in Punjab. It is just another attempt at trying to unite the Congress by dividing Punjab." Asking Gandhi why he had failed to ever visit the widows in Delhi whose husbands had been killed during the genocide in 1984, the leaders said if the Congress leader had "even a twinge of regret over the killing of more than 30,000 Sikhs in Delhi and Punjab in 1984 he would have apologised for the actions of his family."
However, "the manner in which he tried to convert a tragic incident into a political show of strength is inhuman and reprehensible", the leaders said. They described his visit as a "knee jerk reaction in frustration due to the falling graph of the Punjab Congress as well as failure to counter the development agenda of the SAD-BJP combine." "We have succeeded in maintaining harmony despite the grave provocations and it does not behove Rahul Gandhi to incite passions by playing divisive politics," the Akali leaders said.
Dhindsa and Bhundur said the SAD-BJP government was fighting "agencies" who wanted to take Punjab back to the turbulent days as well as anti-national elements who wanted to harm India. Congress Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Amarinder Singh took strong exception to the slander campaign launched by the ruling Akali Dal against Rahul.
"Instead of seeking refuge in the tragic and highly condemnable incidents 31 years ago, you should better come clean over the killing of innocent people protesting desecration of Holy 'Bir' and falsely implicating innocent boys in the case," Amarinder said addressing the ruling party. He also questioned the Akalis' silence between 1998 and 2004 over getting the culprits of 1984 riots punished when they shared power at the centre with the BJP.
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