Lok Sabha Election 2019: Rahul Gandhi addresses a press brief at Congress party Headquarters in Delhi
Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today said the Prime Minister has disrespected the armed forces by comparing the classified surgical strikes under the previous Congress government with "video games". "The Army is not a personal property of Modiji. He thinks the Air Force, Navy and the Army are his personal properties," Rahul Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi this morning.
"The surgical strikes were not carried out by Modiji, it was carried out by our forces. And if Modi ji says that the surgical strikes were not real surgical strikes and a video game, then he is not demeaning the Congress, but he is disrespecting the armed forces."
The Congress chief added, "There are records that state General Vikram Singh has said the UPA government had carried out six surgical strikes between 2008 and 2014 and had given out the dates of the surgical strikes. This has been done by the Army and we (Congress) don't want to politicise it."
Mocking the Congress during an election rally in Sikar in Rajasthan on Friday, PM Modi had said that at first, the Congress ignored the surgical strike carried out by the armed forces under his government. "They opposed it and now, they are saying, 'me too, me too'. Congress is confusing video games with such strikes," PM Modi had said.
Rahul Gandhi also attacked the BJP on the issue of release of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in 1999. "Strictest of actions should be taken against Masood Azhar, but who sent him back to Pakistan? Who bowed down to terror and released him? Not the Congress, but it was the BJP government," Mr Gandhi said.
Masood Azhar and two other terrorists, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were released by the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government in exchange for the passengers held hostage on board Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Then foreign minister Jaswant Singh had accompanied Masood Azhar in a special aircraft and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, then a top Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, was in Kandahar as part of India's negotiating team when the terrorists were handed over.