New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday attacked the government over the Pulwama terror strike, alleging “huge security lapses”, and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “walk the talk“.
The Congress in the last few days had avoided directly attacking the government after Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that his party is not going to have any conversation over the next couple of days other than the fact that “our most beloved people have been killed, their families need us, and we are going to stand with them”.
However, signalling a shift in stance on Tuesday, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi tweeted: “Congress highly responsible and very restrained post Pulwama. Modi pre-2014 made highly provocative statements including resignation calls for then PM (Manmohan Singh) at smallest incident.”
“We do not do so post Uri, post Parliament attack, post Pulwama. But huge security lapses have to to be plugged for no recurrence,” he said.
Such “huge security lapses” including the “ridiculous idea” of moving 2,500 jawans in 78 vehicles at one go, allowing any civilian vehicle on road simultaneously, ignoring direct written intelligence reports on Jaish suicide attack since December 2018,” he tweeted.
Is this attention to detail by “56 chest”?, he said.
At a press conference on Monday, Singhvi, when asked why the Congress was silent on the alleged “failures” of the government leading to the Pulwama attack, had said he as well as many other Congressmen and non-Congressmen had tweeted their concerns in the first few hours after the attack.
“If anyone and I am not at the moment taking the name of anyone or referring to anyone, tries to politicise it, to take political merit or demerit out of it, I do not think the people of this country would at all acknowledge it, recognise it or feed it as a valid form of discourse,” he said when asked about BJP leaders raising the terror strike in their speeches.
“If any political party, ruling or otherwise, tries to make political capital advantage out of it, I do not think it is for me to say, I think the people of this country will not forget it and forgive,” he said.
Another senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal also hit out at the government over the Pulwama terror attack on Tuesday.
“Modi ji you say: It’s over, the time to talk. You maybe right, but: It’s time to walk the talk,” he said in a tweet.
“Promise us: No more ‘japphis’. No more birthday bashes,” he said in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Modi’s surprise visit to Pakistan in December 2015, coinciding with Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s birthday.
On Thursday, 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir when a Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 100 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district.
Also read: Congress’ hug-and-wink politics over Pulwama is a recipe for disaster
Sometimes / often, talking to an adversary is also a very healthy form of walking. Perhaps we ought not to have discontinued a much required dialogue with a continuing migraine over so trivial an issue as a group of Hurriyat leaders meeting the Pakistani High Commissioner in Delhi. All that could have been served up to them is a cup of chai and a plate of biscuits.