The Opposition parties, led by the Congress, launched a stinging attack on the government in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday over its handling of the terror attack on the Pathankot air base, questioning it
The Opposition parties, led by the Congress, launched a stinging attack on the government in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday over its handling of the terror attack on the Pathankot air base, questioning its decision to hand over the operations to the National Security Guards (NSG) and its “flip-flop” policy on Pakistan.
Describing as a “critical mistake” the decision to hand over the operation to NSG, the Opposition sought to know as to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lahore stopover had achieved, as the Pathankot terror strike occurred just a week after that.
Participating in a discussion on the issue in the Lok Sabha, Congress MP and chief whip of the party Jyotiraditya Scindia said that while there was no coordination between the defence and home ministries, the Cabinet Commi-ttee on Security also did not hold any meeting to discuss the situation.
Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and home minister Rajnath Singh over the Pathankot incident, the Guna MP said, “When the Pathankot attack was taking place, the Prime Minister was in Karnataka, attending a Yoga event and tweeting about it. The home minister tweeted saying we have killed the terrorists, while the home secretary said the operation was still on. And then the tweets had to be deleted. The defence minister was in Goa addressing a conclave of party workers.”
The Congress leader also said that the country’s foreign policy “cannot be based on personalities, especially in regard to Pakistan, and when you know it has different power centres... The Army, the civilian government. It should be consultative, strategic, process driven and result oriented.”
Questioning the government’s policy towards Pakistan, he asked: “Is it giving a strong reply or is it a handshake policy. The dialogue with the Opposition is important. You cannot resort to a policy of going alone. It will take you nowhere.”
“When the government knew about the presence of terrorists 48 hours before they struck, why were they allowed to roam for such a long time ” he wondered.
“By going to Pakistan for a cup of tea, the PM has wasted six years of efforts of the UPA government to isolate Pakistan,” Mr Scindia said.
He said although the government was talking about Pakistan taking steps after the Pathankot attacks, the FIR registered by them has no reference to Jaish-e-Mohammad or Hafeez Saeed.
He also took a jibe at the government saying that when Indian soldiers and farmers are dying, it is talking about nationalism.
Kalikesh Singhdeo of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) singled out the National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval for attack, saying he had “usurped” the decision-making powers to tackle the incident.
Mr Singhdeo wondered as to why the Army was not asked to deal with the terror strike as 50,000 troops were available in Pathankot itself and they were the best to tackle such situations.
Seeking to know how the Defence and the Home Ministries could wash their hands off, he said the NSG is used only to tackle urban hostage situations and not for counter-terrorism and added it was “a critical mistake” to hand over the operation to the NSG.
He also pointed out that when the NSG was deployed to deal with the situation, it did not have night-vision devices.
Making a strong pitch for shoring up the intellegence mechanism, Mr Singhdeo said this was the need of the hour given the fact that the country has remained “one step behind terrorists”.
Expressing concern that Maulana Masood Azhar was still roaming free in Pakistan, he said this was in spite of the fact that the involvement of his organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed in the terror strike.
“Are we not bringing enough pressure on Pakistan”, he asked.
