Gandhi ‘butt’ of powerful attacks

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 8

Gandhi ‘butt’ of powerful attacks

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi The Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, has made an emotional defence of her policy in India’s troubled Punjab state in a speech to the Upper House of Parliament. “I am not only the butt of attack of the Opposition in the country, but also of some of the most powerful forces in the world,” Mrs Gandhi said, repeating her rejection of demands by Sikhs in Punjab for a separate State. The Government’s decision to send troops last month into the Sikh’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, has dominated a stormy opening of the new Parliamentary session. Security forces have begun patrolling Punjab’s

main canal after saboteurs opened a 200-metre breach in the Bhakra waterway at the week-end. It was the second such incident since troops moved into Punjab on June 2. The crack-down followed a violent Sikh campaign for political and religious concessions. The Press Trust of India news agency quoted an official spokesman as saying that water flowing into the breached Punjab Canal had been halted to facilitate repairs. It quoted the Chief Minister of Punjab’s neighbouring state of Haryana, Mr Bhajan Lal, as saying that the breach was likely to damage paddy rice and cotton crops valued at two billion rupees (SUS2OO million).