Why orders 'weren't given to fire at Chinese' in Galwan, asks Amarinder

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday asked “why no orders to fire at the Chinese were given” in the face of the brutal attack on Indian soldiers in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley and said “somebody failed to do his job out there”.

“What were they doing sitting out there while their colleagues were getting killed,” he said in an official statement.

If the unit was armed, as is being claimed now, the second-in-command should have ordered firing the moment the commanding officer fell to the Chinese treachery, said Amarinder Singh.

“The nation wants to know why our men did not retaliate in the way they are trained to do, and why they did not open fire if they were carrying arms,” the Punjab CM asked.

Terming the attack horrendous and barbaric, the CM said soldiers at the front should be “clearly told that if they kill one of ours, you kill three of theirs”.

The CM said in the statement that he was not speaking as a politician but as a man who had been a part of the Army and still loved the institution as his stand on such issues has always been the same.

Follow live updates on India-China border tension

The Punjab CM said even after the Pulwama attack, he had declared that if “they kill one of ours, we should kill two of theirs”.

Questioning “why no orders to fire at the Chinese were given” in the face of the brutal attack on the Indian soldiers, the chief minister said “somebody failed to do his job out there, and we need to find out who that was”.

“I want to know, every soldier wants to know, and every Indian wants to know what happened,” said the chief minister, adding that he felt very strongly about this incident, which also “exposed a gross intelligence failure”.

Those boys sitting out there on the mountains deserve answers and expect a hard-hitting response, he added, reacting strongly to what he described as an "insult to every Indian".

What happened out there was not a joke, and the message has to go out strongly to China that India was no longer prepared to take their deceit, said Amarinder Singh, adding that every one of the 20 soldiers killed in Ladakh was “his man”.

Calling for an end to the “Hindi, Cheeni bhai-bhai charade”, the chief minister said India should not chicken out on this issue.

“If China is a world power, then so are we,” he declared, saying “60 years of diplomacy has not worked and it is time to tell them that enough is enough”.

China knows we are capable of taking them on, said the chief minister, pointing out that the Indian Army is a highly professional force, fully capable of taking on any enemy.

The Chinese just cannot be trusted, he remarked, pointing out that several Indian territories are in their occupation since 1962 and they were clearly now trying to take more.

Amarinder also took strong exception to reports of riot gear being sent out to the soldiers at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Stressing that the Indian Army is trained to handle arms and stones or nail studded rods and lathis, he asserted that if the Government of India wants fist or lathi fights with the Chinese, then it should send RSS cadres to the battleground.

What our men out there need is weapons and clear orders that they should be ready to use these weapons to save themselves and defend the country at any cost, he said.