New Delhi: The Indian army’s second most senior officer on Friday briefed a parliamentary committee on the surgical strikes carried out across the Line of Control (LoC) on September 28 and 29.
According to a report in NDTV, the Standing Committee on Defence met with Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Bipin Rawat, who made a short statement. "No sensitive operational details were shared by the Army," Major Gen (retd) BC Khanduri of the BJP, who heads the defence panel, was quoted as saying.
Khanduri said the agenda had included only a briefing, without a question and answer session, since many details are top secret and cannot be revealed.
The committee will put the briefing on record and it will be made public, said the report.
The agenda for the committee's briefing today had originally been described as "Briefing by the representatives of the Ministry of Defence on surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC)". Later, it was changed to remove any reference to the cross-border action.
This led to protests from Congress members Ambika Soni and Madhusudan Mistry, who said the decision not to brief the committee over surgical strikes under the garb of secrecy only amounts to 'lack of confidence' in the MPs.
The Congress has asked the government to release proof of the surgical strikes against terrorists in PoK, to expose Pakistan’s claims that the strikes were false.
The opposition party has also said that when it was in power, three similar strikes were carried out by the army, but were not publicized. However, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has rubbished these claims, in what has quickly turned into a political slugfest.
"The Army always has the capability to carry out different kind of operations. But the call whether any kind of operation would be launched comes from the government. The government thus has to take the responsibility in case the operation is a failure. Similarly the credit of the success has to go to the government," Gen Khanduri was quoted as saying, citing examples of decisions taken by former Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
