With no evidence of Pakistan dismantling its terror infrastructure used to facilitate strikes against India and no news of action against 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, the Bharatiya Janata Party sees no reason for India to re-start composite dialogue with its neighbour.
“We totally disapprove of talks at this stage for this would be premature,” party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said, while indicating that the party would make this point loud and clear inside and outside Parliament.
What is irking the BJP is that the government had made it clear at the highest levels that India would not go back to the negotiating table unless some concrete steps were taken by Pakistan to demonstrate its will to crack down on the terror machine within its territory.
Mr. Prasad pointed out that when three party leaders — L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley — met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently, he assured them of India not being ready for dialogue with Pakistan without some firm steps being taken by that country towards dismantling the terror infrastructure.
A week back, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said that although India had given Pakistan foolproof evidence against Saeed, no action was forthcoming.
Mr. Prasad said the Centre’s sudden change of tactic suggested there was some “pressure” on it to re-start the stalled dialogue.
