Ahead of Punjab Polls, PM Modi’s Office scraps 32-year blacklist of 212 Sikh NRI families

NEW DELHI, August 17, 2016: An extraordinary move by PM Modi's Office is sure to make thousands of Sikhs happy. The 32-year old Government blacklist that banned Sikh NRIs from 212 families to visit India has been scrapped and in election-bound Punjab, this move was much appreciated by the community, mentioned a leading news portal.

The blacklist affected most of the non-resident Sikhs who were residents in the UK, US and Canada. It was the Congress Government who made the blacklist after the Operation Bluestar in 1984 and the 1985 Kanishka bombings.

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As known to all, Operation Bluestar was brought into effect under the order of PM Indira Gandhi. The operation took place between June 3- 8 June in 1984 and it was to remove Sikh militants who were accumulating weapons in the Harmandir Sahib Complex (now Golden Temple) in Amritsar, in order to establish control over the place.

Paper cutting shows PM Indira Gandhi and Bhindranwale. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The blacklist was brought into being as Sikh militants were spreading terror back then. As a result, Sikh militant groups were investigated for the bombing and there were several arrests in Canada. Explosives on the board of a Boeing-747 aircraft, Air India's Kanishka that was flying the Montreal-New Delhi route resulted in destruction. 329 passengers, who were Canadian-Indians in the majority were killed while it was over Irish airspace.

Sources said the decision of the Government to remove the blacklist is likely to be headed by the additional secretary of the home ministry who had examined the blacklist, and 212 cases of a total of 324 were removed, reported ET Bureau.

Apart from that, remaining cases were examined and removed from the blacklist as well bringing relief to many NRI Sikhs. The officials who were in charge of the decision did not want to be identified.

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Further, the ET bureau reports mentioned that the Intelligence Bureau have opposed the decision of removing the ban. During PM Modi's visit to UK and Canada, there were several representations from Sikh NRI groups who urged him for the reconsideration of the India travel ban for Sikhs. Therefore Modi's office delved deep into the matter. As a result, a committee was set up after which members of Intelligence Bureau was asked to reexamine each case minutely.

When detailed case studies were done, it was found that the names that were jotted down in the blacklist were random and that without investigation entire families were included in the list who had no connection to the incident. Apart from that, the surprising part is that the blacklist was never publicly acknowledged. Therefore for all these years, there were numerous visa denials and Sikh NRI communities were barred from visiting India. This led to the rise of thousand of voices who termed the act as systematic discrimination.

– prepared by NewsGram Team

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