The minister of state for information and broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, is evidently not the soul of discretion although his training as a military officer was expected to equip him with sensitivity regarding military operations, even if these are still only in the minds of men and haven’t taken any concrete shape, or may never will.
On a current affairs discussion on television on Sunday, he seemed to strongly suggest that the government might have an ace up its sleeve in dealing with the likes of Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian gangster-terrorist sheltering in Pakistan, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba mastermind Hafiz Sayeed.
Talk of this nature is way outside former Col. Rathore’s remit. But he seemed to have got carried away in propaganda talk in trying to make the point that the Modi government was a strong dispensation, and that the “enemies of India” had better watch out as covert operations were very much on the table. Someone should just tell the junior minister to mind his business.
The same bumbler had engaged in chest-thumping after the Indian raid inside Myanmar to hit Naga hostile camps in June, tweeting that the Modi government had a 56-inch chest. There was much embarrassment afterwards when Myanmar rejected the Indian claim. Bombast by junior ministers is inconsequential, but unfriendly foreign countries can always throw back foolish claims at the country when necessary.
