Darbara Singh

Darbara Singh was the Congress Chief Minister of Punjab from 1980 until October 1983, the years in which the crisis around Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and the Dharam Yudh Morcha deepened. He is not the eighteenth-century Bhai Darbara Singh, who has his own entry.

According to Wikipedia, which draws on Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha records, he was born on 10 February 1916 near Jalandhar, studied at Khalsa College, Amritsar, and was jailed under British rule for the Quit India movement. He sat in the Punjab Assembly from 1952 to 1969, was president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee from 1957 to 1964, and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Hoshiarpur in 1971. He became Chief Minister in 1980 after winning the Nakodar seat; the same article gives the date both as 17 February and as 6 June 1980, so the day is not settled here.

Key moments

• September 1981: after the murder of Lala Jagat Narain, Ramachandra Guha writes that Darbara Singh "was all for pursuing" Bhindranwale at his seminary, but that Union Home Minister Zail Singh dissuaded him, and the Punjab government agreed to Bhindranwale's terms for surrender. On 14 October 1981 Zail Singh told Parliament there was no evidence against the Sant, and he was released (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• July and August 1982: after his men were arrested, Bhindranwale moved into the Darbar Sahib complex and announced a morcha (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). The Akali Dal's Dharam Yudh Morcha began on 4 August 1982, in partnership with him, and ran through the rest of Darbara Singh's term.
• 25 April 1983: DIG Avtar Singh Atwal was shot dead on the steps of Sri Harmandir Sahib as he left after prayers.
• October 1983: Hindu passengers were shot in a bus near Dhilwan, in Kapurthala district; reports give six or seven dead and the attack was never claimed. Sikh groups, Bhindranwale's among them, condemned it and denied involvement. His government was dismissed and President's Rule imposed on 6 October 1983 (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism). Mallika Kaur, cited by Wikipedia, argues the dismissal left no time for an investigation.
• 1984 to 1990: member of the Rajya Sabha. He died in Chandigarh in March 1990; Wikipedia gives both 10 and 13 March.

What he is remembered for. He was the Chief Minister of Punjab through the first year of the Dharam Yudh Morcha and the killings that preceded President's Rule, and the Punjab government under him is the one that in 1981 agreed to Bhindranwale's terms of surrender.