Government failed to protect border from China: Former Union Minister Pallam Raju
BENGALURU: Former Union Minister of State for Defence Mallipudi Mangapati Pallam Raju on Monday alleged that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has failed to protect India’s border with China.
“The nation’s defence is a continuum, as the Congress never tried to politicise it. I think the biggest failure of the Modi government has been its failure to protect our border with China,” he told The New Indian Express on the sidelines of a press conference organised to condemn the ED chargsheet against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case.
“We had a similar situation in 2012 when the Chinese came and sat on our border for two weeks. We (UPA government) resolved it through the mechanisms that existed then and also through bilateral means and through effective external affairs dialogues,” Raju said.
“The fact that the Chinese sat on the border for over three years and have occupied large tracts of Indian territory shows that it’s been a security failure and also a foreign policy failure. This is exactly what Rahul Gandhi highlighted which irritated the Union Government that they cancelled his Lok Sabha membership... but the courts stood by him,” he said.
“It is not a secret that we assess our threat on two fronts —the western front with Pakistan and the eastern front with China. Several Army chiefs in the past have highlighted that we need to strengthen our capabilities if we are to face a two-front war. I think the government should address it. We have to ensure our armed forces are adequately equipped to deal with such a situation,” he said.
Raju, a special invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), called the ED’s chargesheet against Sonia and Rahul vendetta politics. He alleged that in order to cover its failures, the Modi government has unleashed the ED on Congress leaders.