Surgical Strikes: Congress Plans to Corner Govt over Foreign Secretary Statement to House Panel

New Delhi: The proceedings of the parliamentary panel on external affairs on Tuesday that discussed India’s surgical strikes in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir may remain a secret, but it’s now an open war between the Opposition and the government with the Congress expressing fear that Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar could get sacked for “speaking the truth” to the panel.

Party sources told News18 that the foreign secretary’s statements would be raised by Opposition in Parliament when it convenes on November 16.

Among the more vocal was former home minister P Chidambaram. “I agree with the Foreign Secretary and I thank him for setting the record straight,” he told News18.

The Congress has been criticising the BJP and the Modi government for making the surgical strikes an election issue ahead of polls in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Congress in its defence has claimed that it too had done strikes, but as a policy preferred not to take political ownership or make it public.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s “khoon ki dalaali” statement in this context had sensationalised the issue. Faced with criticism over Rahul’s comments, the Congress had seemed to be on backfoot but the party regained some of its mojo with the row over the parliamentary panel briefing.

Sources told News18 that the Congress now hopes to corner the government by confronting it on what it calls "false claims" when Parliament session begins on October 16.

Congress is already in touch with “like minded” parties such as the JD-U and the Left to issue a notice to ask government to come clean on the surgical strikes. The Opposition will demand of the government that it has to give a list of previous strikes and also why it was allowing its ministers to “politicise” the issue by giving credit to the PM and the RSS instead of the Army.

Clearly, the political strikes are not yet over.