Pak will soon pay for Jammu: Army chief
STERN MESSAGE ‘Will honour ceasefire the day Pak stops sending terrorists across LoC’
NEW DELHI: The Indian army will give Pakistan a reply “sooner rather than later” for the February 10 terror attack on a military camp in Jammu, General Bipin Rawat said.
Six soldiers and a civilian were killed in the fidayeen attack in Sunjuwan by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists. Soon after the incident, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that Pakistan, which she accused of backing the attackers, would pay for its “misadventure”.
“Pakistan thinks it is fighting a war that is paying them dividends but we have several options, including surgical strikes,” the army chief said in an interview on Wednesday, without giving details that would compromise India’s tactical and strategic response.
Rawat said that he would order a ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC) as soon as Pakistan stops sending terrorists to India. “The Indian army will honour the ceasefire and de-escalate tensions the day Pakistan stops sending terrorists across the line of control,” Rawat said, referring to the 2003 agreement put in place as a confidencebuilding measure.
Ceasefire violations at the LoC have spiked over the last year. There were 860 such violations recorded in 2017 from either side, as compared to 271 the previous year, according to government data.
Asked about the January 27 firing in Shopian, in which three protestors were killed by army bullets at a time when the PDPBJP government had withdrawn cases against first-time stone-pelters on the suggestion of the Centre’s interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma, Rawat said: “The cases were withdrawn as a goodwill gesture but what goodwill are they (the stone pelters) showing? The pelting continues.”
He defended the military action, saying stone-pelters were hampering military operations. “The army has a job to do. We don’t want collateral damage but what do you expect us to do when we get surrounded by a stone pelting mob? Even in Shopian, we fired in the air first.”
Referring to the controversial incident when Major Gogoi tied Kashmiri shawl weaver Farooq Ahmad Dar to the bonnet of a jeep last year, “Let me tell you, we honour local sentiments and don’t conduct operations during janazas (funeral processions) even though terrorists come there and fire in the air. What do you want me to do, have a seat in front of all jeeps. We got flak even for that.”
The Jammu & Kashmir police had registered an FIR against the army after the Shopian firing. Asked if he had given permission to the father of Major Aditya (named in the Shopian FIR) to approach the Supreme Court to get the police complaint quashed, Rawat said, “The father has a right to defend his son. If a girl (Kerala actress Priya Varrier) can approach the court because her wink has offended people can’t a father do the same if he apprehends that his son would be arrested?” The General also had a piece of advice for the media: to not show visuals of grief-stricken family members of martyrs. “Because the media only focuses on soldiers killed by Pakistan, they build a narrative on how they have managed to inflict a blow on us.”
Army chief General Bipin Rawat has sparked a political row with his remarks that the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) has been growing faster than the BJP in Assam because of the support of Muslims, with Pakistan and China pushing Bangladeshi migrants into the North-east part of the country to destabilise India.
The BJP said the army chief has to be saluted for his comment, but the Congress attacked the government, saying it was trying to divert attention from the fraud at Punjab national Bank.
AIUDF chief, Badruddin Ajmal, tweeted: “By making such a statement, the army chief has indulged in politics which is against the constitutional mandate given to him.” Later, he told reporters in Guwahati, “We respect General Rawat a lot but I think he has been misinformed and misguided. If the Army chief is saying demographic change is happening in Assam, it is the government’s job to check it. We are the only party which said, `Shoot anyone who infiltrates our borders’.”
Infiltration from Bangladesh, and the possible change to Assam’s demography, led to a violent agitation in the state between 1979 and 1985. It ended with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985.
For the first time since 1951, the state government is updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to weed out illegal immigrants.
Ajmal formed the AIUDF in 2005 to champion the cause of the Muslim community. The party currently has three MPs in the Lok Sabha and 13 legislators in Assam.
He clarified that his party believed in inclusiveness. “People say we are a Muslim party, which is false. We have always given 20-25 seats to our Hindu brothers in all elections. We all are Indians,” Ajmal said.
BJP Spokesman Sambit Patra said on TV that the army chief was commenting on an “important aspect of national security”. It is only natural that the “socio-political, demographic, cultural aspects should be discussed,” he added. “In fact, the army chief should be saluted for his talk.”
Other BJP leaders found the comments about illegal immigration from Bangladesh in sync with their political and ideological standing.
Two senior BJP office bearers, who asked not to be identified, said Rawat merely repeated the “known fact” about the threat illegal immigration posed to India’s security in the northeast.
“What’s wrong with what he has he said?” said one of the two leaders. “Even we feel, and have reiterated on several occasions, that demographic profile of the northeast has changed significantly because of illegal immigration.”
He said the RSS, too, had in 2015 passed a resolution on India’s changing demography in which it said “the religious imbalance of population in the north-eastern states has assumed serious proportions”.
The other BJP leader said his party’s growing influence in the northeast will lead to the rise of outfits such as the AIUDF in opposition.
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad refused a direct comment on the army chief’s remarks. “I would simply say that in the coming days you will get to hear many outrageous things. BJP will point fingers on many leaders, many parties in order to divert the attention from the PNB fraud. So the BJP ministers - seniors and juniors – and spokespersons will move heaven and earth to divert the attention of the people.”
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief, Asaduddin Owaisi, was critical of General Rawat. On Twitter, he said that it was neither the Army Chief’s job to interfere in political matters nor to comment on the rise of a political party.