Amid claims that the Margaret Thatcher government might have helped Indira Gandhi plan Operation Blue Star, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab today said this had exposed a "major conspiracy" of the Congress against Sikhs.
"The party (Congress) had even gone to the extent of compromising the national sovereignty for political gains," SAD secretary Daljit Singh Cheema said in a statement in Chandigarh.
Asking the Congress-led UPA government to come clean on the matter, he said the reports had exposed the "nefarious designs" of the Congress against the Sikh community.
In Amritsar, radical outfit Dal Khalsa said "the Sikh diaspora has been deeply hurt (by the claims)" and wrote to British Premier David Cameron seeking a "clear statement" on the issue.
The head of the SGPC, apex religious body of the Sikhs, Avtar Singh Makkar said the news has left the Sikhs numbed.
The SAD secretary said it was shocking that to solve an issue of internal security, the then Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi took services of British forces.
"It amounts to a distrust of the Indian forces as well as compromise on the sovereignty of a democratic country," Cheema said.
The Congress-led UPA government must come clean on the compulsions under which it had to take help from the British forces, he said.
Cheema asked the Union government to make public all relevant documents and tell the nation the truth behind the operation "whose wounds are still fresh in minds of the Sikh community".
Declassified documents have claimed that Britain's elite Special Air Services had advised Indira Gandhi before the 1984 raid on the Golden Temple.
