New Delhi:
It was an attack in the heart of the national capital and the opposition will not let the government forget that. On the sidelines of India's 7/9 tragedy, when 13 people lost their lives to terror, a political war of words is being fought.
It was Chidambaram vs Jaitley on Friday.
Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley took the government to task accusing it of failing to solve any recent terror attacks in the country. "In any such event before this, not finding any clues never happened. Some events would get resolved and some wouldn't. It shows our intelligence agencies are not able to decipher the way of working of the terror organisations," Mr Jaitley said.
He also said that the government must ensure zero tolerance against terrorists. In a reference to the heckling that greeted Rahul Gandhi when he visited RML Hospital where the Delhi High Court blast victims had been taken on Wednesday, Mr Jaitley said the Congress should introspect on the hostile reception its leaders were getting. In strong words, Mr Jaitley said, "It should be an eye opener. The incident at RML is an example of the revulsion that has set in. The credibility of the government is being questioned."
Mr Chidambaram said, "I visited RML, no one heckled me, large number of families came to me and poured out their grief and angst, if I was heckled I wouldn't complain." And in gentle sneer, "Jaitley has been out of office for too long to know how people react."
No one, Mr Chidambaram retorted, could accuse his government of not doing enough. He slammed the main Opposition party for not showing statesmanship at a time of national tragedy.
"Not a day passes that we don't reinforce our terror infrastructure, we are looking at every threat from all over the nation...I regret what leaders of opposition have said, especially when families are suffering and people are dead. It's deeply unfortunate that the BJP so quickly gave up bi-partisanship and statesmanship. Perhaps it is not in the DNA of the BJP to maintain bipartisanship when India and neighbouring countries face the grave challenge of terrorism," the Home Minister said.
To Mr Jaitley's charge on unsolved cases, Mr Chidambaram said, "He listed six unsolved cases, he has forgotten that there are state governments that are probing many of these cases." He pointed to unsolved cases in BJP-rued states to elucidate.
Mr Chidambaram candidly admitted that the "three terror attacks that happened since I took over have been blots," but said other governments were not free from blemishes.' His government he said was building capacity so that it was in a situation to prevent or preempt a terror attack.