How Congress rebutted Tharoor’s BJP-backing ‘surgical strike’ claims

New Delhi: Shashi Tharoor might have defended his claims on India’s  conducting surgical strikes in Pakistan not before 2016 but Congress has been listing out eight such such instances  between 2000 and 2014 for the past around nine years, highlighting that the UPA government was in power for a substantial time during this period.

On 28 June, 2018, the party had issued a statement and its then Communication in-charge Randeep Surjewala held a press conference after the Modi government released a video about the surgical strike in 2016 after the Uri terror attack and to rebut BJP charges against the party. 

Surjewala had then listed surgical strikes conducted between 2000 and 2016, which span over the tenures of AB Vajpayee, Singh and Narendra Modi. According to the statement, two surgical strikes were conducted during Vajpayee era -- at Nadala Enclave across Neelam River on 21 January, 2000 and Baroh Sector on 18 September, 2003.

During Singh's tenure, six such strikes were conducted between June 2008 and January 2014. The first during UPA government was on 19 June, 2008, targeting Bhattal Sector followed by one on August 30-September 1, 2011 in Sharda Sector across Neelam River in Kel and 6 January, 2013 at Sawan Patra check post.

Other surgical strikes during Singh's tenure were 27-28 July, 2013 at Nazipur, 6 August, 2013 at Neelam Valley and on 23 December, 2013 in which then Army chief Gen Bikram Singh said ten Pakistani soldiers were killed. The surgical strike in 2016 was during Modi regime

The Congress had in 2018 accused the BJP of “shamelessly politicising” the surgical strike of 28-29 September, 2016 after the Uri terror strike.

“None less than the BJP president Amit Shah dishonoured the 70 year long history of bravery and sacrifice of our armed forces by making a disgraceful statement on 7 October, 2016 in a press conference at Delhi that 'Indian Army has crossed the LoC for the first time in 68 years', besides publicly declaring that BJP will encash the surgical strike in the entire country,” Surjewala said in the June 2018 statement.

In the midst of Lok Sabha elections in May 2019, Congress had accused Modi of insulting the armed forces by comparing the 2013 surgical strikes to “paper and video games” and questioning statements of Gen Singh.

“They perhaps strike at video games, that’s why people intended to be affected by it do not know about it across the borders or in India...What kind of strike was this that neither the terrorists knew about it, nor those who carried them out?" Modi had said at an election rally in Rajasthan's Sikar in May 2019.

Incidentally, Tharoor also has attacked the BJP in his 2018 book ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India’, claiming that  the Modi government has “not hesitated to politicise” the armed forces, not just bypassing time-honoured principles of seniority in appointing the army chief, but “by repeatedly using the army in its political propaganda”. 

“The shameless exploitation of the 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ along the Line of Control with Pakistan, and of a military raid in hot pursuit of rebels in Myanmar, as a party election tool—something the Congress had never done despite having authorized several such strikes earlier—marked a particularly disgraceful dilution of the principle that national security issues require both discretion and non-partisanship,” it said.

Congress Media and Publicity Department Chairman Pawan Khera had highlighted this portion in Tharoor's book to counter the Congress MP.