Anti-Sikh riot report kicks up storm in India
NEW DELHI, Tuesday (Reuters) India's parliament was disrupted on
Tuesday as rival lawmakers clashed over a report on anti-Sikh riots in
1984 which named ruling Congress party leaders in connection with the
violence that left nearly 3,000 Sikhs dead.
Opposition lawmakers want the government to take action against a
junior minister, Jagdish Tytler, who the report said may have instigated
rioters after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by her Sikh
bodyguards more than 20 years ago.
But the Congress party-led coalition government headed by Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh, said it was not taking action
against Tytler as the panel did not have conclusive evidence against
him.
Tytler has denied the charges.
The inquiry report by retired judge G.T. Nanavati, which was tabled
in parliament on Monday, probed one of India's worst religious riots,
which broke out across northern India after Gandhi was assassinated on
Oct. 31, 1984.
Media reports and human rights groups say the Congress party - which
was ruling the country at the time as well - had a hand in organising
the anti-Sikh killings, a charge denied by the party.
On Tuesday, deputies from the opposition National Democratic Alliance
- including members of a small Sikh party - demanded an immediate
discussion on the report in the lower house of parliament but the
speaker said a time had to be agreed upon first for such a debate.
"I deeply mourn the occasion (the riots)," speaker Somnath Chatterjee
said as opposition lawmakers shouted anti-government slogans. He then
adjourned the house.
The upper house was also adjourned for an hour as an uproar erupted
over the Nanavati report.
"The Nanavati Commission has held the Congress party responsible for
the killing of Sikhs," Sushma Swaraj of the opposition Bharatiya Janata
Party said in the upper house.
But the government said it would investigate whether legal action
could be taken against another Congress leader, Dharam Das Shastri, also
accused of instigating riots. |