SAD chief thanks Modi for his comment on Operation Blue Star

Chandigarh: Sukhbir Singh Badal, president of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), has expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media for his comments on the 1984 Operation Blue Star in Parliament and demanded an apology from the Government of India to the Sikh community. The move has sparked rumours of a possible reunion between the SAD and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Although both parties have denied any possibility of reviving their decades-long alliance, Badal warming up to the Prime Minister is being seen as the first move in that direction.

The Akali had broken off its alliance with the BJP in 2021 over its opposition to the three farm laws passed by the Modi government. While the BJP went on to ally with Punjab Lok Congress — a breakaway faction of the Congress led by former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh — the Akalis tied up with the Bahujan Samaj Party. Both alliances, however, performed miserably in the 2022 assembly elections that brought the AAP to power in Punjab.

With the Congress now leading the INDIA bloc — a united opposition alliance against the National Democratic Alliance — political circles are abuzz with the possibility of the Akalis and the BJP coming back together.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday, Badal appreciated the Prime Minister’s statement on the 1984 Operation Blue Star as an “outrageous attack” on the Golden Temple Amritsar adding that it should be followed by an unconditional apology from the Government of India.

In his reply to a no-confidence motion in Parliament earlier this week, the Prime Minister had referred to Operation Blue Star as an “attack on the Akal Takht”, the highest temporal body of the Sikhs. Modi was criticising the Congress government led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who had, in 1984, ordered the Indian Army to enter the precincts of the Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out Sikh militants. For the Sikhs, this was considered to be an act of sacrilege and the defiling of their holiest shrines.

“Is it right to get the civilians attacked by the Air Force in our own country? Who was ruling at that time — Indira Gandhi. The Akal Takht was attacked. It is still fresh in our memory. They had developed this habit in Mizoram. And that’s why they went on to attack the Akal Takht in my own country, and now they are preaching (to) us,” said the PM, also referring to the 1966 Air Force attack on Mizoram.