Cutting across party lines, Punjab leaders, including Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, expressed shock over senior Congress leader Sam Pitroda’s statement regarding 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
While Capt Amarinder maintained that he was in total disagreement with Pitroda’s controversial remarks that “if the 1984 riots happened, they happened, so what”, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) strongly condemned the “shameful utterances” as highly deplorable and an insult to the humanity.
The Akali Dal and Patiala’s sitting MP Dr Dharamvir Gandhi even went on to demand Capt Amarinder’s resignation.
Expressing himself in total disagreement with Congress Overseas unit head’s controversial remarks “if Pitroda had actually said this”, Capt Amarinder said that it was shocking. “1984 riots were a big tragedy and justice had yet not been meted out to the victims,” he said.
“Sam Pitroda has ripped open while Capt Amarinder has sprinkled salt on the wounds of the Sikhs by making complimentary statements to confirm that the Congress was behind the massacre of Sikh in 1984 and their assertions are preposterous that this should be now be a closed chapter,” said SAD MLA Bikram Majithia.
Petroda’s statement had exposed the real insensitive and inhumane face of the Congress because they have pleaded that the horrendous killings of innocent and unarmed Sikhs in Delhi and other parts should be treated as “non-event” and hence ignored, he said adding that Pitroda is political guru of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and is reflecting on Rahul’s mind only.
“Congress distancing itself from Pitroda’s statement won’t wash its sins,” he said
SAD’s senior vice-president Daljeet Singh Cheema said that all Punjabis and Sikhs would give a befitting reply on May 19 to the Congress party’s arrogance-laden statement on 1984.
He said that Pitroda’s statement clearly show that the Congress party still feels proud for its role in orchestrating the most inhuman and terrible crime against the humanity by butchering thousands of innocent Sikhs in 1984 and does not want to listen any word against the killers.
Expressing shock, the Union Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal said that the Chief Minister took one full day to react to Rahul Gandhi’s principal advisor Sam Pitroda’s inhuman remark on the ‘84 genocide, “only in the face of the angst of the Sikh community”.
“Even now, the Chief Minister did not deign it fit to ask Congress president Rahul Gandhi to remove Sam Pitroda as his principal advisor. He has simultaneously given a clean chit to the butcher of Delhi - Jagdish Tytler. He also did not ask for the removal of another genocide perpetrator - Kamal Nath as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh,” she said.