Welcoming the U.S. action designating JuD as a terror outfit, Congress on Wednesday attacked the BJP-led government at the Centre saying while the party made “muscular rhetorics” on terror issue for past ten years, it engaged in “flip flop” on it after coming to power.
“I think it is a welcome step if the USA has decided to designate the JuD as one of the terrorist institutions. It would help the cause of fighting international terrorism in a cohesive and collective manner. It was long overdue,” former Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said.
The Congress leader, however, trained his guns at the government over the terror issue.
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“The irony is that if you juxtapose the actions of the US government with that of the current government here, you find that after espousing very muscular rhetorics for ten years that terror and talks cannot go hand in hand, the first thing that the government did was to send out an invite to the Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif to come and grace the swearing in ceremony (of Narendra Modi) here,” Mr. Tewari said.
The Congress leader alleged that the message that went out from this step to the permanent establishment of terror and their instrumentalities in Pakistan like JuD, LeT, Hizbul Mujahideen and other terror fronts was that whatever the BJP said while in the Opposition was “merely shooting the breeze”.
Mr. Tewari said that the impression that the BJP government created was whatever its leaders were saying earlier was only the opposition rhetoric and “in their books, terror and talks can go hand in hand. So this is going to be the long-term implication for India.”
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The Congress leader said that he hopes that the government learns from the experience of other countries as to how they have been firm and consistent in dealing with terrorism irrespective of whether a particular party was in government or Opposition.
“So the flip flop, which has characterised the first 30 days of the government in almost every sphere is really going to undermine India’s fight against terror,” Mr. Tewari alleged.