UPA shelved strike on Pakistan after 26/11 due to 'pressure from a foreign country': PM Modi targets Congress

PM Modi said the Congress must explain who “succumbed under pressure from a foreign country and played with the nation’s sentiments.”

Raigad: Lashing out at the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the erstwhile Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA government of not striking Pakistan after the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks and wanted to know what prevented a military response.

This was the first reaction of Modi after the podcast-interview of former Union Home Minister and Congressman P Chidambaram, who spoke about the then United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, flying to New Delhi to meet him and Dr Singh and urging India not to start a war.

Commissioning the Navi Mumbai International Airport at Ulwe in the Raigad district, the Prime Minister stated that Mumbai, being India’s financial capital and one of its most vibrant cities, was targeted by terrorists in the 2008 attacks.

Modi, in his speech, however, did not take the name of Chidambaram, who was moved from the Finance Ministry to the Home Ministry after the terror attacks.

“Congress should tell the people why it prevented the army from attacking Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. A big Congress leader, who was the then Home Minister, has recently in an interview said that after 26/11 our armed forces were ready to strike. The country also wanted that. If he is to be believed, because of pressure from one country it did not happen. The Congress government stopped the armed forces from attacking Pakistan,” Modi said.

However, in his address, Modi did not name the United States.

Modi said that the Congress needed to tell the country who succumbed under pressure from the foreign country and played with sentiments of the country.

“The government in power at the time sent a message of weakness and appeared to surrender before terrorism,” he said and demanded a clarity as to who influenced this decision, which he said undermined the sentiments of Mumbai and the nation.

He asserted that the opposition party’s weakness emboldened terrorists and compromised national security, a cost the country paid with innocent lives.

“For our government, nothing is more important than the security of the nation and its citizens”, affirmed the Prime Minister, stating that today’s India responds with strength and strikes back within enemy territory, as witnessed and acknowledged globally during Operation Sindoor.

In an interview, Chidambaram had said: “The whole world descended on Delhi to tell us 'don't start a war’ (against Pakistan). Two or three days after I took over (Condoleeza Rice came) to meet me and the Prime Minister. To say, 'Please don't react'. I said this is a decision which the government will take, (but) an act of retribution did cross my mind. The Prime Minister had discussed this (retaliatory military action) even when the attack was going on. And the conclusion, largely influenced by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Foreign Service, was that we should not physically react to the situation.”