New Delhi: The Congress leadership is reportedly “very upset” with senior leader and former Home Minister P Chidambaram for his recent comments on Operation Bluestar, which the party believes have caused unnecessary embarrassment, sources said on Sunday.
Chidambaram, speaking at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, on Saturday, described Operation Bluestar as “wrong” and said former Prime Minister **Indira Gandhi paid the price with her life for the mistake.”
Party insiders said the Congress high command views his remarks as careless and avoidable. “Senior leaders who have received everything from the party should be more careful while making statements that can cause embarrassment. This cannot become a habit,” a senior leader said, adding that the party’s rank and file are agitated over Chidambaram’s repeated controversial remarks.
During the event, Chidambaram, a Rajya Sabha MP, said there were other ways to handle the militants inside the Golden Temple in 1984. “There was a way to retrieve and capture all the militants, but Operation Bluestar was the wrong way. I agree that Mrs. Gandhi paid with her life for the mistake, but it was a cumulative decision of the Army, Intelligence, Police, and Civil Defence, and you cannot completely blame her,” he said while discussing journalist Harinder Baweja’s book They Will Shoot You Madam: My Life Through Conflict.
Operation Bluestar was a military operation conducted between June 1 and June 10, 1984, to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar. The operation deeply hurt Sikh sentiments and led to Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
Party sources said the leadership believes senior members should act with restraint, especially on sensitive historical matters, to avoid fueling political controversy or reopening old wounds.
