Word: punjab
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...Driver Hari Singh pulled his crowded vehicle out of the Punjab capital of Chandigarh shortly after nightfall for what was to have been a routine trip to Rishikesh, a Hindu pilgrim center in Uttar Pradesh. But half an hour into the journey, a white Fiat suddenly stopped in front of the bus, forming a blockade. Five armed men, four of them turbaned in the manner of Sikhs, burst out of the car, threw Singh off the bus and commandeered his vehicle. After driving the bus to a nearby field, the gunmen opened fire, instantly killing 38 men, women and children...
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi decided last week that he was not going to take it anymore. Frustrated by the failure of the state government in Punjab to check terrorism in the troubled region, Gandhi dismissed the state's chief minister and imposed direct rule by the central government in New Delhi. This is the second time in four years that the federal administration has removed an elected government in Punjab in order to combat Sikh extremists...
...Indian government has been struggling since 1983 to control Punjab's militant Sikhs, who have been waging a violent campaign for an independent homeland. After last year's breakdown of a fragile peace accord between the Sikhs and the government, terrorists stepped up their deadly campaign. Nearly 600 people were killed in 1986, and more than 300 have already been murdered this year...
...that is not the Prime Minister's only problem. Gandhi's party has suffered a string of local-election defeats. Gandhi is hoping the crackdown in Punjab will help his party retain power in next month's state-assembly elections in neighboring Haryana...
Indeed, so resounding were the setbacks that the victory by Gandhi's party, as the junior partner of a coalition, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir offered little consolation. In the past 18 months the Congress Party has lost state elections in Punjab, Assam and Mizoram. Gandhi appeared willing to live with these defeats because they temporarily quieted rebellious local ethnic and religious parties. There were, however, no such considerations in Kerala and West Bengal. Even more devastating, the loss of Kerala marked the first time Gandhi's party was out of power in all four south Indian states...