The World - News from Feb. 23, 1987

In a new move to oust Surjit Singh Barnala as chief minister of troubled Punjab state, dissidents in his Akali Dal political party voted to expel him from the Sikh party. The move came in a meeting in Amritsar that was attended by 319 of the party’s 435 delegates, according Harban Singh Ghuman, a former vice president of Barnala’s moderate wing. Barnala told a news conference in the state capital at Chandigarh that the meeting had no legal basis. “My party is intact, and there are o desertions,” he told the United News of India news agency. Sikh militants, who are fighting for a separate homeland, have been trying to oust Barnala from office and rebuild the party in support of the separatists.