A day after the militant attack on Army convoy in Kashmir, which left eight jawans dead, the BJP on Tuesday hit out at the Congress-led UPA Government for soft-pedalling on terror.
BJP president Rajnath Singh said: “The morale of the terrorists is growing continuously. The government keeps on making promises that it will take strong action against terrorism and wipe it out. Forget wiping it out, the morale of terrorists is going up constantly.”
While maintaining that the BJP was fully with the Centre in fighting terrorism, Rajnath said the UPA Government was soft on handling terrorist and Maoist activities. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s regime should accept this challenge with firm conviction.
The BJP chief added, “I believe this is an issue on which there should not be any politics of any kind. We also do not want to do any politics on it. We have been demanding for so long and now we request that the government take effective measures to free this country from the threat to its internal security, be it the problem of terrorism or Maoists.”
“As far as the calamity in Uttarakhand is concerned I would like to say that no political party should do any politics. If a Chief Minister or any political party wants to help the victims of the Uttarakhand incident then I feel the help should be accepted.”
Rajnath’s statement came in the wake of an ugly political spar between the Congress and BJP over claims made by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi that he had helped rescue over 15,000 Gujaratis from Uttarakhand. The Congress leaders had ridiculed Modi’s visit to Uttarakhand and subsequent reports in media over the rescue claims.