Bharatiya Janata Party national president Rajnath Singh on Friday wants India to scale down its diplomatic ties with Pakistan “for the time being” in the wake of the twin bomb blasts at Dilsukhnagar here.
Addressing a press conference after visiting the bomb blast sites and calling on the injured in three hospitals, Mr. Singh said there were no two opinions that Pakistan’s ISI was sponsoring terrorist activities in India. Following the Mumbai terror attack, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had stated that unless Pakistan helped in catching the culprits, there would be no dialogue.
But Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) were announced subsequently. There was no point in continuing with them now. He wanted India to lodge a strong protest with Pakistan on the terrorism issue. “It is not being done strongly and with conviction,” he added.
Accusing the UPA government of being soft on terrorism, Mr. Singh wanted it to accept terrorism as a “challenge” and come out with an action plan to stamp it out and bust the sleeper modules. The BJP would fully support the government in combating it.
Replying to a question, he said the government was soft due to vote bank politics. “Maybe the government feels that the vote bank will be adversely affected,” he said. But nobody will favour terrorism, be it Hindus or Muslims.
The BJP president held the Centre responsible for the twin blasts even as he maintained that he did not wish to politicise the issue.