Amarinder announces compensation for Jodhpur detenues

Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday assured compensation for the remaining 325 Jodhpur detenues, at par with the 40 who have been awarded by the Court. Capt Amarinder also promised to also persuade the Central Government to do the same.

The Chief Minister came out with the assurance during a simple ceremony held at Punjab Bhawan to hand over the cheques, amounting to Rs 2,16,44,900, to the 40 Jodhpur detenues, after the Congress MLA from Patti pointed that compensation was paid only to those who approached the Court while there were total 365 captive Sikhs, and the rest remaining should also get the compensation.

Capt Amarinder has handed over cheques of the state’s 50 percent share of approximately Rs 4.5 crore compensation announced by Amritsar District and Sessions Court to the 40 detenues who had sought judicial relief.

Notably, a total of 365 persons were arrested and detained at Jodhpur jail in the wake of Operation Blue Star in 1984, and were eventually released in 1986. As many as 100 had died since then. Of the 40 who had gone to the court, seven had passed away in the interim.

Sharing the pain of the detainees, Capt Amarinder said that those who did not go to the court were also entitled to compensation and his government will make the same payment to them too.

He expressed the confidence that the Centre would agree to his plea to also contribute its share to the remaining 325 detenues.

“Our government was prepared to release the full compensation to 40 detainees who had won the case in District Court, but I was informed by the Central Government of its decision to release its share too,” the Chief Minister told the detainees or survivors.

“It was a small compensation for the pain they had undergone,” he said while assuring the detainees that his government would also look into their demand for jobs for their children.

Recalling the painful period that Punjab had gone through post 1984, the Chief Minister urged the detainees and their families to forget the past and move on.

Congress MLA Harminder Singh Gill, who was also detained after 1984, thanked the Chief Minister for coming to the rescue of the detainees, time and again.He recalled Capt Amarinder’s gesture in visiting the detenues in Nabha prison, where they were initially kept before being shifted to Jodhpur, to give them clothes as the detainees had been kept naked in Nabha prison.

Harminder recalled that it was Capt Amarinder who gave them Rs one lakh each in 2006, during his previous tenure — “the only compensation given to the detainees before today”.

He said that the detainees met former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal several times during the various Akali rules after Operation Blue Star, but got no help.

He blamed the Centre for delaying the compensation by going in appeal before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and observed that had Capt Amarinder not intervened, the matter would have again gone into cold storage. “It is the Chief Minister’s efforts and decision to pay that had forced the Centre to agree to release its share,” he added.

One of the detainees Jasbir Singh Ghuman lauded the Chief Minister as the ‘man of the match’ in the entire episode. “Our acquittal had come after a 20-year court battle and then it took us seven years to win the compensation,” he said.

He said that only Capt Amarinder understood the pain of the detainees. “Despite our pleas, the Akalis failed to persuade the BJP-led Central Government not to go in appeal against their compensation,” he said.

The detainees had met the Badals on several occasions to seek compensation but the Akali leaders simply refused to pay heed to their grief and need, said Ghuman, adding that he was doubtful if the Centre would even now pay its share and it might still be left to Captain Amarinder to pay the full compensation.

“Centre has always discriminated against Punjab. We don’t want to go before the RSS and I request Capt Amarinder to also pay the remaining amount of compensation,” he said while also seeking jobs for their children.

Pointing out that Captain Amarinder had quit the Congress after Operation Blue Star, Ghuman said that the entire Punjab would always remain indebted to the Chief Minister for his support to the community.