'It's just a shrine, not Blue Star memorial'

Seeking to play down the controversy over setting up a memorial in the Golden Temple in the memory of those killed during Operation Blue Star, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Thursday said it would be a simple gurdwara  and nothing else.

“The Congress is blowing the matter (setting up of memorial) out of proportion otherwise nothing is controversial in it. It will be simply a gurdwara and nothing else,” he said here.
He said that it will be a gurdwara wherein holy Guru Granth Sahib would be kept inside for recitation and people would come to pay obeisance.

He said that it would be wrong to say that a monument is being made as it will only be gurdwara. “No name of anybody who was killed during the operation by the Army would be written on any wall of the Gurdwara,” he said.

Lashing out at the Congress leadership, Sukhbir said if the party has any objection over the gurdwara “it is in bad taste and the Sikh community would give befitted reply to the party.”

On the demand of Sikh hardliners and radicals, Shiromani Gurudwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC) is constructing the memorial on the premises of the Golden Temple in the memory of militants and devotees killed during Army's ‘Operation Blue Star’ in 1984.