Operation Blue Star: BJP, SGPC take dig at Congress after Chidambaram remarks

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee (SGPC), the body responsible for the management of historical Gurdwaras, on Sunday (October 12, 2025) took a dig at the Congress, saying the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went ahead with ‘Operation Blue Star for political reasons’.

BJP national spokesperson R.P. Singh said Operation Blue Star was completely avoidable, as rightly mentioned by former Home Minister P. Chidambaram.

“Mrs. Indira Gandhi, for political reasons, chose the path of confrontation for electoral gain, seeking to ignite nationalist fervour before the 1984 parliamentary elections by portraying the most patriotic community of India, the Sikhs, as anti-national. In doing so, she got trapped in her own political web and ultimately paid for it with her life,” he said in a statement, adding, “Operation Blue Star was not a national necessity; it was a political misadventure.”

The reaction came after senior Congress leader Mr. Chidambaram said, “There was a way to retrieve and capture all militants, but Operation Blue Star was the wrong way, and I agree that Mrs. Gandhi paid with her life for the mistake but the mistake was cumulative decision of the Army, intelligence, police and civil defence and you cannot completely blame Mrs. Gandhi.” He was speaking at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Himachal Pradesh’s Kasauli on Saturday.

SGPC secretary Gurcharan Singh Grewal said the remark made by Mr. Chidambaram “speaks about the truth; he has revealed the truth, which we welcome. But we disagree when he mentions that the action on Darbar Sahib wasn’t solely Indira Gandhi’s decision. It doesn’t make any sense because Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister… The action [Operation Blue Star] was done by her to reclaim lost political ground.”