Jaishankar’s remarks expose govt’s lie: Cong

NEW DELHI: Armed with foreign secretary S Jaishankar’s purported remarks that the army had carried out cross-border operations in the past too, the Congress on Wednesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP over their “lies” on the September 29 surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC).

The main opposition party also questioned the Prime Minister’s silence over defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s continued “bid to politicise” the army’s action.

“Does it look good for the defence minister to be directly contradicted by the foreign secretary? Which one of them is prevaricating? Foreign secretary has spoken in measured and precise terms,” Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said. “This kind of prevaricating only to score brownie points is unfortunate, because it paints the nation in a bad light,” he said.

A war of words has erupted over the army raids across the LoC with the BJP and the Congress accusing each other of politicising the surgical strikes.

Taking to twitter a day after Jaishankar briefed the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs on surgical strikes, Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala hoped that the foreign secretary will not be “axed like his predecessor Sujatha Singh for speaking the truth and exposing the BJP’s deception”.

“Modi Govt’s rhetoric, bravado and machismo’s exposed by FS, Jaishankar. Amit Shah’s and Parrikar’s lies lie exposed,” Surjewala said in another tweet.