BJP leader Harvinder Singh Phoolka criticizes book

The Bharatiya Janata Party alleged that former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, through her book, attempted to shield former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress leadership from responsibility for the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre.

At a press briefing, senior BJP leader Harvinder Singh Phoolka said: “In the book that Sonia Gandhi has published, she has tried to give her family a clean chit over the massacre of Sikhs.”

He alleged that the book’s account, which was in “complete contradiction of the official record”, wrongly attributed the delay in deploying the Army to Gen. A.S. Vaidya.

“First, as per the Misra Commission’s report, 6,100 soldiers were available in Delhi on the night of October 31 and the morning of November 1, but they were not deployed in time. The Commission also wrote that if 5,000 of these soldiers had been made to march through Delhi’s streets on the morning of November 1, at least 2,000 Sikhs could have been saved. Both the Misra Commission and the Nanavati Commission made the same point in their reports,” he said.

“The Misra Commission says that even if Rajiv Gandhi had alerted General Vaidya, the Army Chief’s job is only to keep the Army ready, while administrative officials are responsible for calling in the Army and deploying it in the field. The administrative machinery neither called in the Army in time nor deployed it,” said Mr. Phoolka.