PM using armed forces as political prop for poll gains: Congress

New Delhi

Congress today hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for using the surgical strikes to woo voters in Uttarakhand and accused him of using the armed forces as a political prop for electoral gains.

“It is extremely unfortunate and it is highly regrettable that the Prime Minister is using – rather misusing – the armed forces as a prop for political and electoral purposes.

“We would like to tell the Prime Minister of India that nobody has ever questioned the integrity of the armed forces but what we have indeed questioned and we would request you to refrain from doing, is using the armed forces as a political prop,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.

He recalled that the Prime Minister while addressing a poll rally in Uttarakhand, which contributes substantially to the armed forces had said “Attack me if you want, don’t ever question the integrity of our armed forces”.

Tewari said there is enough empirical evidence to suggest that what government characterised surgical strikes, were not the first which were carried out by any government.

The Congress leader said such operations along the LoC happened when UPA was in government and it happened before the UPA.

“It is ironic that the Prime Minister’s statement comes at a point of time when reports have emerged in the public space that the NDA-BJP government through the ICCR has decided to sponsor or part sponsor the Karachi Lit Fest,” he said.

Tewari also hit out at the NDA for pursuing a policy towards Pakistan which is not coherent and cogent, he said over the past 30 months, “the pendulum has swung from ‘No talks till terror abates’ to ‘talking about terror’ and finally establishing the contact by using a surreptitious cultural facade.”

“This itself exposes the duplicity, the hypocrisy and the complete lack of a policy towards Pakistan insofar as this government is concerned.

“It is the deep state in Pakistan which continues to be inimical to the interest of India but then any such policy needs to be coherently defined, cogently articulated and implemented in a calibrated manner, something which this government has completely failed to do,” he said.

The Congress leader noted that while no one has said that people-to-people contact should not be there, it has been repeatedly underscored that “we have no enmity or ill-will towards the people of Pakistan”.

Lamenting reports that ISI has been successful in counterfeiting both the Rs 500 and Rs 2000 currency notes, he said if these assertions are correct which government agencies are making, where does it leave Prime Minister’s assertions made on November 8, 2016 that the objective of demonetisation was to proscribe counterfeit currency as well as rein in terror financing.

The objectives of demonetisation have gone “down the drain”, he noted.

“The NDA-BJP government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has made a complete and absolutely hash of national security. National Security is not about securing the interest of the Nation, it is but a mere political football which has to be cynically exploited for electoral purpose,” he said.