NEW DELHI:Thousands of Sikhs in election-bound Punjab will likely cheer a Prime Minister’s Office driven move to scrap a 32-year government blacklist that banned India visits by Sikh NRIs from 212 families. The blacklist was put in place by a Congress government after Operation Bluestar in 1984 and the Kanishka bombings in 1985. Most nonresident Sikhs affected by this ban are residents in the United States, UK and Canada.Operation Bluestar was an Indian Army offensive against Khalistani militants holed up in the iconic Golden Temple of Amritsar. It was ordered by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi Explosives on board Air India ’s Kanishka, a Boeing-747 aircraft flying the Montreal-New Delhi route, destroyed the plane while it was over Irish air space killing 329 passengers, most of them Canadian-Indians. Sikh militant groups were investigated for the bombing and there were several arrests in Canada.Officials familiar with the government’s decision on removing the blacklist said a committee headed by additional secretary of the home ministry had examined the blacklist, and 212 cases of a total of 324 were removed.The remaining cases are being examined and may be removed from the blacklist as well. These officials did not want to be identified. A home ministry spokesperson said he had no comments.Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s visits to the UK and Canada had seen several representations from Sikh NRI groups asking for reconsideration of the India travel ban. Officials said the proposal to remove the ban was opposed by the Intelligence Bureau . But the PMO intervened, and a committee was set up after which IB was asked to reexamine each case.One official explained that many of the blacklisted names were arbitrary. Entire families had been blacklisted on grounds that did not bear up to close scrutiny. The blacklist was never publicly acknowledged. But following several visa denials over the years, Sikh NRI groups started voicing opposition to what they described as systematic discrimination.