Era of talks over, we now hit back at terror: Shah
PANAJI: Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday referred to the 2016 surgical strikes conducted across the Line of Control (LOC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), and said that those showed that the era of talks was over and that of “a fitting response”, started.
India carried out the strikes in September 2016 by sending special forces to pre-empt more attacks from across the LOC days after 19 soldiers were killed after infiltrators crossed over from the Pakistani territory and attacked an Indian Army camp in Kashmir.
Shah cited the strikes and said that for years, attackers from across the border would come and cause carnage. “But from the leadership in the Delhi durbars, there was no decision forthcoming,” he added, after laying the foundation stone for the National Forensic Sciences University’s Goa campus. He added that the surgical strikes were conducted under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lead
ership and during Manohar Parrikar’s tenure as defence minister for the first time when there was an attack and Indian soldiers were killed along the border. “...For the first time, we told the world that it was not without consequence that you can attack India’s borders.”
To be sure, there was also a local context to the comment. The late Parrikar was Goa’s most popular chief minister, and elections in the state are due next year, with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power, facing significant antiincumbency.
Shah’s reference to the strikes came days after five soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with heavily armed terrorists in a forested area at Surankote in J&K’S Poonch district on Monday amid a spike in violence in the region. To be sure, Shah did not make any reference to the current context.
The home minister’s comments are seen by analysts as an indication of his government’s resolve to not let terrorists and separatist forces gain the upper hand in the region where it hopes to conduct elections by next summer.