Tytler says he will apologise for the anti-Sikh riots

Jagdish Tytler, whose Lok Sabha poll candidature has been withdrawn by the Congress in the wake of the controversy over the anti-Sikh riots issue, has said he will apologise "a thousand times" for what happened in 1984.

"I will apologise because it happened in our time. I would apologise a thousand times for what happened to the whole Sikh community...I would say whatever happened was shameful," he told a television channel.

"I would say the people, the administration and the governor, who should have controlled (the situation), did not control at that time," Tytler alleged.

A worried Congress had on Thursday withdrawn its controversial leaders Tytler and Sajjan Kumar from the electoral fray as the ghost of the 1984 riots returned to haunt the party over their alleged role in the carnage.

The Congress decision came amid a raging controversy over fielding the two leaders, whose names figured as accused in the riots, accentuated by the incident of throwing of shoe by a Sikh journalist at home minister P Chidambaram at AICC press conference on Tuesday.