“IF I DIE a violent death as some fear and a few are plotting, I know the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassin, not in my dying,” said the late Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in a note she left behind. Written in her own handwriting without a date, the note was found among the papers she left. It was released by the AICC (I) on December 17.
THE GHOST TOWN started regaining normalcy on December 17 as eight tonnes of the remaining deadly methyl-isocyanate gas was converted to pesticide at the Union Carbide plant. The safe conversion of MIC has restored the people’s faith in the scientists’ ability to carry out the “zero-risk” operation successfully. They have started trickling back into their houses. However, most of the commercial establishments continued to remain closed.
THE FIVE-MEMBER selection committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, dominated by skipper Sunil Gavaskar, dropped a bombshell saying they excluded Kapil Dev, one of the world’s leading all-rounders, from the Indian team for the third Test against England at Kolkata. Dev, who played a stellar role in winning the World Cup in 1983, has been dropped on “disciplinary grounds”.
PRIME MINISTER Rajiv Gandhi said that the government was ready to consider the Anandpur Sahib resolution, provided it was within the framework of the Constitution. Addressing an election meeting in Baleswar, the last in a series of six meetings in the districts of Orissa, Gandhi claimed that the government had always been keen on solving the Punjab impasse and charged the Opposition with “scuttling the efforts.”
