Govt unwilling to air cross-LoC raid proof

K V Prasad

Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 5

Amid the political clamour for authenticating the surgical strikes by the Indian Army on terror launch pads across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, the emphatic view among those tasked with security is that there is little room for such a concession.

Doubting Thomases can continue to raise questions, but sources privy to the thinking in the higher echelons of the security establishment on the South Block told The Tribune that notwithstanding the vociferous demands, the government is unwilling to succumb to it.

Across the border, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif continued to raise the temperature on developments in Jammu and Kashmir and maintained that without any investigation into the Uri incident, within a few hours, India blamed Pakistan for the attack.

On his part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is understood to have cautioned his Cabinet colleagues not to speak out of turn on the surgical strikes and leave the job to those entrusted to comment. The sources said the view is that succumbing to the demand of providing evidence would be a cowardly response. This categorical assertion came even as the Army handed over footage of the strikes recorded by the assault teams.

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“The laid-down procedure has been followed. The DGMO [Director General of Military Operations] briefed [about the surgical strikes]. It was not the Defence Minister, nor the PM and not the Home Minister. That was the right thing to do and they [Army] did it. There was a time when documents were submitted. Now clips are given and the clips have been given,” Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir told reporters here.

As the debate intensified, the Congress sought to couch the demand for making the evidence public as it will help to call Pakistan’s bluff. “Time was ripe to expose the malicious lies,” it said.