Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday called Shiromani Akali Dal Sukhbir Singh Badal’s statements on former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi “lies”.
Amarinder Singh said Badal’s statements—in which he condemned the former for celebrating Gandhi’s 75th birth anniversary—were “brazen falsehoods” meant to defame the former chief minister and divide the Sikh community.
Badal had some reporters on Monday that Rajiv Gandhi had “ordered the killings” of Sikhs and his mother Indira Gandhi, also a former prime minister, had attacked “our holiest place Shri Harmandir Sahib with tanks and mortars”.
“By repeatedly lying about the issue, they have been trying to manipulate the facts, which clearly showed that Rajiv was in no way complicit in the events that followed the tragic assassination of his mother, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in 1984,” the chief minister said.
“The fact was that Rajiv was not in Bihar and heard of his mother’s death on a transistor radio (with no mobile phones etc available then),” he said, adding that Badal trying to “mislead the people of Punjab by feeding them outright lies”.
