Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday clarified that it was wrong to say that he had ever defended or given ‘clean chit’ to Jagdish Tytler over his alleged involvement in the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984.
“It is for the investigating agencies and courts to investigate and decide,” he said, while asking, “who am I to give clean chit to anyone, including Tytler”. He was interacting with about 2,000 Punjabi NRIs who had gathered at Hotel Hilton in New York on Saturday night.
Replying to another question, he also clarified that he had never said that the Sikhs should forget 1984. “How can I ask anyone to forget 1984 when I myself resigned from the Parliament and my party to protest what happened at that timeIJ” he asked while replying to a separate question from another Punjabi NRI.
“Sikhs can never forget what happened in 1984 and it will always remain etched in our memory,” he asserted, while pointing out, “We have suffered so many ghalugharas (massacres) in past and they are all part of our history and so is 1984 and how can we forget our historyIJ”
At the same time, Capt Amarinder added that it does not serve any purpose to rake up the issue during every election.
Particularly, referring to the Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, he asked, “why does Badal recall the 1984, only during the election days and never before or after thatIJ” This, he added, Badal always does to hide his own failures.
The senior Congress leader supported the demand of several NRIs that there should be no blacklist and nobody should be barred from visiting the country of his roots.
The former Chief Minister agreed with another questioner that the Akalis had brutally victimised and persecuted the NRIs by slapping false cases on them so that they are not able to visit Punjab. “This is clearly done to grab your properties”, he said, while adding, once the Congress comes to power in 2017, the government will invite all the NRIs to file objections and claims about their property with a guarantee that they will not be arrested or harassed.
“We will review all the cases pending against you and ensure that no person facing investigation is arrested”, he said amidst a thundering applause.