NEW DELHI: The government today came in for a scathing attack in Lok Sabha over the handling of the terror strike on the Pathankot air base, with the opposition dubbing as a "critical mistake" the decision to handover the operation to NSG.
They also questioned as to what Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lahore stopover had achieved, noting that the terror strike had happened just a few days after that.
Participating in a discussion on the issue, Kalikesh Singhdeo (BJD) singled out the National Security Advisor for attack, saying he had "usurped" the decision-making powers to tackle the incident.
Singhdeo wondered as to why the Army was not asked to deal with the terror strike as 50,000 troops were available in Pathankot itself and they were the best to tackle such situations.
Wondering how the Defence and the Home Ministries could wash their hands off, he said the National Security Guards (NSG) is used only to tackle urban hostage situations and not for counter-terrorism and added it was "a critical mistake" to hand over the operation to the NSG.
He also pointed out that when the NSG was deployed to deal with the situation, it did not have night-vision devices.
Making a strong pitch for shoring up the intellegence mechanism, he said this was the need of the hour given the fact that the country has remained "one step behind terrorists".
Expressing concern that Maulana Masood Azhar was still roaming free in Pakistan, he said this was in spite of the fact that the involvement of his organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed in the terror strike. "Are we not bringing enough pressure on Pakistan", he asked.
On Prime Minister's Lahore stopover, Singhdeo wondered as to what cost the gestures of celebrating a birthday and having a cup of tea and having dinner in the present context of Indo-Pak ties.
Lashing out at the government over its handling of Pathankot terror attack and its overall Pakistan policy, the Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia said while there was no coordination between Defence and Home Ministries, the Cabinet Committee on Security had no meeting on the situation.
It was more a "show off" and less effective, he said.