Operation Bluestar anniversary on June 6, Amritsar a fortress

Three-tier security is in place to prevent trouble on the 32nd anniversary of Operation Bluestar on Monday. Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is guarding against violence at the Golden Temple.

Nearly 8,000 police personnel, besides six companies of paramilitary forces, have been camping in Amritsar for a week now, deployed at 200-odd checkpoints. Cops in civvies are both inside the Sikh shrine and outside the old walled city. The market circle around the Golden Temple is sealed.

The Sikh radicals gathering every year at the Akal Takht to remember the 1984 military raid on the shrine to flush out militants have clashed with the SGPC Task Force in both 2014 and 2015. This year, the SGPC has doubled the strength of its task force and installed more security cameras inside the shrine.

Not only the highways entering the city are under tight security but also police have detained various hardliners to prevent any forced shutdown on Monday. “We are confident about the city’s security plan and banking upon the border range police to keep an eye on the rural segments,” said police commissioner Amar Singh Chahal. Police are deployed both inside and outside the shrine, besides markets and entry points. Regular cops man 120 checkpoints, while the border range police another 50.

“Other than screening and profiling potential troublemakers, we’ll have a secret network for inputs. We will not allow anyone to force shops close,” said the police commissioner. During ‘Genocide Remembrance March’ on June 3, Sikh radical organisation Dal Khlasa had called for a shutdown in Amritsar on Monday.