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UPA's term 'Hindu terror' has weakened our stand: Rajnath

Last Updated 31 July 2015, 20:37 IST

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday accused the previous UPA government of ‘weakening India’s stand on terrorism’ by using the term ‘Hindu terrorists”, a charge that triggered an uproar in the Lok Sabha.

Making a suo motu statement on the recent Gurdaspur terror attack, Singh raked up a host of issues, including the controversial India-Pakistan joint statements at Sharm-el Shaikh in Egypt, statements at the Havana Non-Alignment Movement talks, the 1962 war with China and former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s mysterious death in Tashkent in the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1966.

Singh slams Shinde
“The then home minister had coined the new term ‘Hindu terrorism’ in order to change the direction of probe. It weakened our fight... Hafiz Saeed of Pakistan had congratulated the then home minister,” Singh said in Parliament, in a reference to former home minister Sushilkumar Shinde.

Singh said that terror had no religion, caste or creed and that the government would never allow such a shameful situation again. He said: “China snatched India’s rose, Tashkent saw the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, and India lost after winning the war as the then government continued to window dress the compromises it had made.”

Interestingly, the sharp attack on the Congress came moments after Singh told the Lok Sabha that neither the House not the country should appear divided on the issue of combating terrorism.

Unlike Thursday, when his statement was drowned in the Congress’s protest in the Rajya Sabha, the entire Lok Sabha listened to Singh on Friday. Trouble began only when the Congress members trooped into the Well barely after Singh had completed his statement.

Singh then launched a vitriolic attack on the previous Congress-led UPA government, taking the opposition by surprise. The Speaker ignored the Congress’s demands to respond to the Union home minister, an action that further enraged the opposition leading to an adjournment.

When the House reconvened, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge demanded that the extempore remarks made by the Union home minister–that were not part of the written statement – be expunged.

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(Published 31 July 2015, 20:37 IST)

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