New Delhi: After surgical strikes claim made by the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that as far as he knew, the UPA government did not launch any surgical strikes, reported Hindustan Times.
PM Modi said that the Army chiefs in charge at the time have no information on such strikes.
“What kind of surgical strike was it? Who issued the orders? Where are the orders? These are the questions they [UPA] should be asked to answer. I can only say that we have not found any records of this,” Modi said.
In 2016, the Modi-led NDA government launched a counterstrike against terror across the Line of Control after the Uri terror attack. In February 2019, the government launched an air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp at Balakot in Pakistan after Pulwama terror attack.
Last week, in an interview with HT, Singh said his government had carried out similar surgical strikes but did not use them to garner votes.
In the ongoing elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has made national security as a central agenda of its campaign.
“For a decade or so, the Indian government had tied its own hands as far as Pakistan-backed terror was concerned. Pakistan kept mounting attacks and there was no cost imposed upon the perpetrators. This gave terrorists and their sponsors a kind of impunity that we can do anything and get away. First with the surgical strike and now with the air strike, we have sent the message that there will now be significant costs to sponsoring terror,” Modi said.
Speaking on the recent decision of United Nations listing Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, Modi said everyone was wrongly describing this as a China-related issue when, in reality, it is about “global terror”.
PM Modi said he is confident about coming back to the office and has been from his first day as Prime Minister – May 26, 2014. He said that “the election is based on performance, not perception. To say that in these elections there is just a name that is working, that isn’t correct”.
“The 2019 elections are special because this is the first time those born in the 21st century are voting and are not burdened by the past but are in pursuit of a better future,” Modi said.
Keep yourself updated on Lok Sabha Elections 2019 with our round-the-clock coverage -- breaking news, updates, analysis et al. Happy reading.
