CHANDIGARH, India, Dec. 15, Reuter: Punjab’s beleaguered Chief Minister, Sujit Singh Barnala today emerged unscathed from bids by Sikh and Hindu groups in the State Assembly to oust his 15monthold government.
The moderate Sikh leader, whose support in Punjab and the Test of India has eroded with his failure to crush violence, appeared to survive largely thanks to the ‘opposition’s inability to unite against him.
In a stormy session punctuated by angry walkouts, rebel Sikh deputies at the last minute dropped plans to table a no confidence motion, and a mainly Hindu party failed to win enough support for a similar vote.
Simultaneously, police lifted a. daylong curfew from much of the Sikh Holy City, Amritsar as a protest strike against the murder of a Hindu politician there went off peacefully.
However, curfew was maintained in two central areas of Amritsar where police said tension remained high.
In Chandigarh, 20 deputies from a splinter group of Barnala’s Akali Dal Party dropped their planned no confidence motion and walked out of the Chamber, accusing him of stifling democracy by arresting four of their collegues under security laws.
Since the arrests, the group has been unable to muster the 25 votes needed to introduce a nonconference motion,
The rebel Sikh deputies want Barnala ousted from the Akali Dal leadership for ordering police into the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, earlier this year to hunt freedom fighters.
Barnala completed his Assembly victory when the mainly Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BIP) also dropped for lack of support to a no confidence motion designed to force him to call out the army.
Earlier, however, Barnala was forced to concede a major law and order debate next Thursday by deputies of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party, which supports him provisionally, who staged another walkout to back the demand.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 19, 1986
