By IANS,
New Delhi : The 1984 anti-Sikh riots stirred passions in parliament Monday with speaker after speaker in the Rajya Sabha roundly condemning what Tarlochan Singh (Independent), who raised the issue through a calling attention motion, termed a “genocide”.
In contrast, the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state to be carved out of West Bengal brought senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran L.K. Advani and expelled party leader Jaswant Singh together in the Lok Sabha.
“It was a genocide akin to the holocaust Hitler unleashed against the Jews (during World War II),” an impassioned Tarlochan Singh said, calling for a separate Supreme Court committee on the riots.
“We want justice. How long do you want us to wait for justice?” he asked in response to Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s statement on his calling attention motion on the 1984 riots.
“The issue will never die down,” said Tarlochan Singh, a former member of the National Minorities Commission.
He lamented that police officers who looked the other way and failed to control the riots “have been given gallantry awards and promotions”.
Member after member spoke with equal passion as they condemned the lack of action against the perpetrators of the carnage that claimed the lives of over 3,000 Sikhs, among them women and children, throughout the country.
Among them were Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley, S.S. Ahluwalia (both of Bharatiya Janata Party), Brinda Karat (Communist Party of India-Marxist), D. Raja (Communist Party of India), Naresh Gujral (Akali Dal) and Avtar Singh Karimpuri (Bahujan Samaj Party).
Apart from question hour and papers tabled, the issue dominated the day’s proceedings, beginning around 12.15 p.m. and stretching well into the evening.
Chidambaram, in his statement, said 41 people had been sentenced to life terms, two to five imprisonment of 10 years, 114 to three to five years imprisonment and 115 to jail terms below three years for their role in the riots.
“The government is taking all possible steps within the ambit of the law in consultation with the ministry of law to bring the guilty to book, wherever (the) Nanavati Commission has named any specific individual(s) as requiring further examination or specific cases requiring reopening and re-examination,” he said.
In the Lok Sabha, Leader of Opposition Advani responded positively to Darjeeling MP Jaswant Singh’s request to support his demand that the government take steps to end the hunger strike by activists seeking the creation of Gorkhaland.
Recalling his three-decade long association with Advani and addressing the BJP MPs as his “former colleagues” during zero hour, Jaswant Singh said: “I appeal to my former colleagues to join me in my appeal to the government.”
“In our manifesto, we have mentioned it (a separate Gorkhaland state). In the evening a delegation will meet me,” Advani said in the house, addressing the Darjeeling MP as “my colleague”.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi told the Lok Sabha that the government will adopt a three-pronged strategy, including an “election type” house-to-house campaign, to contain Japanese Encephalitis (JE) infection that claimed 560 lives in Uttar Pradesh this year.
In a significant statement in the Rajya Sabha, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said people with a “shady character” should not become judges, adding the government would introduce a legislation to tighten existing laws and make the judiciary more accountable.
During the Question Hour, Moily said that the Judges (Standards and Accountability) Bill would be introduced “maybe in the last days of the (current) session (that lasts till Dec 21)” and admitted the existing Judges (Enquiry) Act of 1968 “needs to be revisited”.
In a separate development, 75 non-Congress Rajya Sabha MPs submitted a notice to Chairman Hamid Ansari seeking Karnataka Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran’s impeachment.
Informed sources said that should the notice be accepted, a three-member committee would be set up to take procedural steps to remova Dinakaran, who is facing accusations of land grabbing and accumulating wealth beyond his known sopurces of income.