DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, on Monday condemned Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, for not offering an unequivocal apology for the attack on the Sri Darbar Sahib and Sri Akal Takht Sahib, as well as his party-sponsored riots in 1984.

"Despite knowing that his grandmother ordered the attack on Sri Darbar Sahib in 1984 and his father's cronies led mobs who murdered and burnt Sikhs in cold blood on the roads of Delhi, Rahul Gandhi tried his best to subvert a question which sought to question the role of the Congress in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination which led to the massacre of 3,000 Sikhs," she said in a statement here.

She said when forced to answer the question at the Brown University in the US, the Congress leader did not apologise for either his grandmother or his father's actions.

"He tried to brazen it out by referring to the incidents as having occurred a long time back," she claimed.

Asserting that the evasive answer itself showed how much "pain" he had for the Sikh community, Harsimrat Badal said instead of appreciating that it was the large heartedness of the Sikh community which did not stop him from entering Sri Darbar Sahib, Rahul Gandhi tried to give an impression that his visits to the holy shrine amounted to giving a clean chit to him and the Congress family.

"This is furthest from the truth. Our shrines are open for all. Rahul should have understood this and apologised for the criminal conduct of his family during his visits to the shrine instead of using the visits to whitewash himself and his family," she said.

She said it was even more shameful that instead of admitting their own fault, the Gandhi family had made a Sikh Prime Minister -- Dr Manmohan Singh -- apologise for the events of 1984. She also asked Rahul Gandhi to clarify what he was referring to as "unfortunate" in his statement abroad.

"Does he think the attack on Sri Akal Takht was unfortunate or the subsequent genocide or the role of the Congress party in the spread of terrorism in Punjab," she asked.

The SAD leader claimed the truth of the matter was that the Gandhi family as well as the Congress had no regret for either the attack on the holiest Sikh shrine or the genocide of Sikhs in 1984.

(editor@dailyworld.in)