By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Congress leader Manish Tewari triggered a controversy on Tuesday by questioning the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s response to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.The BJP promptly hit out at the Congress for being insensitive to the concerns of national security at that time.
In his book, ‘10 Flash Points; 20 Years – National Security Situations that Impacted India’, to be released on Dec 2, Tewari said restraint is not a sign of strength but perceived as weakness. “There comes a time when actions must speak louder than words. 26/11 was one such time when it just should have been done. It therefore, is my considered opinion that India should have actioned a kinetic response in the days following India’s 9/11,” he tweeted excerpts from his book.
After the BJP attacked the Congress, Tewari said he was amused at BJP’s reaction on one excerpt from a 304-page book and wondered how it would react to his hard analysis of national security under their government.
The former union minister also mentioned about the Doklam crisis and criticised the Modi government’s handling of the episode. “…in July 2018, the Defence and Finance Ministers of the subsequent Modi-led government shelved all the plans of raising a mountain strike corps against China citing financial constraints. Mounting pressure on the LAC leading to the Doklam crisis in 2017 could have been averted, provided the mountain strike corps would have been raised, trained, resourced and efficaciously deployed,” he wrote. ‘‘Scrapping the mountain strike corps is perhaps the greatest disservice that this government did to India’s national security.’’
But, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said that the Congress leader’s claims amount to admission of failure of the UPA dispensation. “The summary of the book is that the so called restraint in the face of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was essentially signs of weakness. India should have acted firmly… After reading the book, we feel pained like every Indian,” he asserted.
