Congress veteran and former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Sunday described Operation Blue Star, the 1984 Indian military action to flush out Sikh separatists from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, as “the wrong way” to secure the shrine.

Speaking at a literature festival in Kasauli, he said the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “paid with her life” for the decision but stressed it was a cumulative mistake involving the Army, police, intelligence agencies, and civil service, and that she alone should not be blamed.

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Chidambaram said, “No disrespect to any military officers here, but that (Blue Star) was the wrong way to retrieve the Golden Temple. A few years later, we showed the right way to retrieve the Golden Temple by keeping the Army out.”

He described the operati

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