NEW DELHI: The Congress (I) president Mr Rajiv Gandhi has for the first time criticized the Prime Minister Mr Chandra Shekhar for having agreed to hold talks with the Akali Dal leader Mr Simranjit Singh Mann without laying down preconditions.
In a letter to the Prime Minister Mr Gandhi told him; the result (of not laying down preconditions) is that while you claim that Mr Mann did not raise the question of Khalistan with you he is having a field day spreading the message that you have yielded to their main demand.
Circulating the letter here Friday the party spokesman Mr M.J.Akbar asked the Prime Minister to correct at once such notions as being created by the statement of Mr Mann that he had called off his proposed rally on January 26 because he believed that the Centre was willing to discuss Khalistan.
The remarks by Mr Gandhi and the statement of Mr Akbar made at the party’s daily briefing here were harsh compared to the party’s approach so far about the manner in which the government was handling the Punjab situation.
Mr Gandhi told the Prime Minister it is one thing to have contacts with insurgents and militants at intelligence and police level quite another for a head of government to engage himself in talks without preconditions with parties dedicated to the dismemberment of India and worse actually allow the question of the dismemberment of the country to be part of the agenda. We always made it abundantly clear that negotiations would be held only within the framework of the constitution and only after violence was abjured. You chose to lay down neither condition.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 1, 1991
