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Who is worse at fighting terror : Cong, BJP row continues |
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There is no end to the war of words between the Congress and the BJP and the respective combines they head, the UPA and the NDA, on who is worse at fighting terror. The verbal duel between the Congress and the BJP on the Kandahar hijack issue is continu¬ing, if not intensifying. The BJP has now hit back at Congress president Sonia Gandhi saying that she should focus more on issues of governance rather than indulging in what the party calls virulent attacks on leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani.
Addressing a public rally in Rajasthan, Sonia Gandhi had severely attacked Advani on his statement that he was not aware of the decision to send his then Cabinet colleague Jaswant Singh to Kandahar with terrorists to release them in exchange for the hostage passengers of the hijacked IC-814 plane in December 1999.
Sonia Gandhi had questioned whether Advani’s admission meant that then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not trust Advani and for what reasons.
Taking up cudgels on behalf of the saffron party, its spo¬kesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said : “Sonia Gandhi would do the country a great service if she, instead of focussing her misguid¬ed ire at the Opposition, actually directs the rag-tag experiment called UPA towards issues of governance.”
Stung by Sonia Gandhi’s criticism of Advani, the BJP said it does not need any lessons in nationalism from the Congress chief who, it alleged, is yet to “fully learn and appreciate” the core ethos of Indian civilisation.
The party said the Congress was “solely focussed” on de¬flecting attention from core national issues like price rise, food security and national security by harping on the Kandahar hijacking episode.
Prasad said the Congress constant criticism of a “single painful decision” taken by the NDA government was “truly unfor¬tunate” and claimed the attacks cannot “blemish the BJP’s track record in effectively crippling terrorism during its six years in power.”
Terrorism threat to democracy : PM
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the meantime, has said that terrorism poses a threat to freedom and democracy every¬where. Speaking at the Raising Day function of the Special Protection Group (SPG) on March 31, he called on the internation¬al community to come up with measures to combat terrorism. Dr. Manmohan Singh reiterated his Government’s resolve to deal with threats to peace and security, to political stability and econom¬ic progress, to social and communal harmony in the country.
More SIMI operatives nabbed in Madhya Pradesh
Security forces continue their efforts to unearth the terror network reportedly built by the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which came to light after the nabbing of 13 SIMI activists in Indore. More arrests continue to be made with about 10 being arrested last week.
There are reports that the SIMI activists arrested by the Madhya Pradesh police allegedly said that they were planning to target top BJP leaders including L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi because they believed that these leaders were linked to the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the post-Godhra riots.
The police also claimed to have discovered the existence of SIMI’s women’s wing called Shaheen Force.
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