New Delhi: In a startling revelation just months before Punjab Assembly polls, some CIA files that have been declassified have claimed that post-Operation Bluestar, Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal sided with Sikh extremists during 1980s.
The declassified CIA Report claimed, “He (Badal) is working to advance his personal fortunes by heading his own Akali Dal dissident party and siding with Sikh extremists against the state government. Twice chief minister of Punjab (1970-71 and 1977), Badal continues to try to position himself as a future candidate for that post."
The CIA's declassified files running into 12 million pages were released by spy agency last week.
The documents include a research paper ‘India and the Sikh Challenge’, detailing ‘India’s most important Sikhs’, said a report in Hindustan Times.
“Indira Gandhi’s decision to send in the army against Sikh militants in Punjab last May was an admission that her political strategy to defuse the crisis had failed," revealed the CIA document on former PM Indira Gandhi's decision to send the army to Golden Temple in 1984.
“The paramilitary troops she had sent earlier had failed to bring the well armed extremists to heel. The unrest in Punjab in our view also provided Gandhi with a justification for augmenting her military forces in a critical border state. We estimate that between mid-May and Mid-June the army deployed 20,000-25000 troops to Punjab from adjoining regional commands to reinforce the more than 100,000 army personal already there," the newspaper quoted CIA files.
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