AAP government, Centre spat over 1984 anti-Sikh riots

NEW DELHI: Delhi’s AAP government and the Union home ministry have got into a spat over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. In response to the Kejriwal government’s demand that the Centre speed up distribution of compensation promised to riot victims, the home ministry has said that the state government was yet to appoint ‘public prosecutors’ to the special investigation team that was constituted almost three months ago to re-probe the riots.

Reminding the Delhi government about the constitution of the special investigations team in February, a letter from the home ministry dated May 1 said, “more than two-and-half months have passed since constitution of SIT…but the SIT has not been able to move forward for…requirement of manpower”.

The letter also puts on record a meeting between the home departments of Delhi and the Centre to discuss requirement of ‘public prosecutors for SIT’, among other manpower possibly including some clerical staff, from the Delhi home department.

Putting a specific timeframe to the demand of human resource for kickstarting investigations of the SIT – chaired by IPS officer Pramod Asthana – the letter also sought recruitment “within a week”.