JOIN USThe Manmohan Singh-led UPA government carried out four surgical strikes but it never publicised the operations, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar said on Thursday.
“When Manmohan Singh was the prime minister, there were four attacks like the surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). However, we never went to town with it. One operation was also done through Nagaland,” Pawar, who was the agriculture minister in the UPA government, told a gathering in Nagpur.
Pawar, who was also the defence minister in the P V Narasimha Rao-led Congress government, said that when the strikes were carried out in the aftermath of Uri attacks, he had fully backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The Uri attacks came as a shock to people...It was imperative to give a befitting reply...Indian soldiers and commandos entered PoK and destroyed the terror camps there,” the NCP chief said, adding: “We all congratulated the government.”
However, Pawar said, he was concerned over the way in which it was being publicised. “That is why the prime minister had to pull up his party workers…such actions (of armed forces) should not be publicised (for political mileage),” he said.
DH News Service
CPM targets Modi on terror, J&K
The CPM has asked the Modi government to “desist from sabre-rattling vis-a-vis Pakistan and bend its energies towards strengthening the border security apparatus to counter cross-border terrorism”, DHNS reports from new Delhi.
The party has also suggested that the Kashmir situation be given “urgent political attention”.
“If the Modi government has a modicum of national interest in mind, it will desist from sabre-rattling vis-a-vis Pakistan and bend its energies towards strengthening the border security apparatus to counter cross-border terrorism. It should make it prohibitive for any extremist group to cross the LoC,” stated the editorial of the upcoming issue of the party mouthpiece ‘People’s Democracy’.