The UPA government, which is under attack from the BJP for its alleged failure to check terror attacks, hit back on Friday, saying it was “not in the DNA of the BJP” to be bipartisan.
“It is deeply unfortunate that the BJP should have so quickly given up [its] pretence of bipartisanship which it had shown just two days ago. It is not in the DNA of BJP to maintain bipartisanship,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told journalists here. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was present.
Mr. Chidambaram's criticism came within hours of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley alleging at a news conference that the UPA government had failed to solve the cases of six bomb blasts that occurred in the recent past.
Criticising both Ms. Swaraj and Mr. Jaitley for addressing the media on Wednesday's blast in the Delhi High Court complex which killed 13 people and injured 88, Mr. Chidambaram said he did not recall the Leaders of the Opposition addressing a news conference to criticise the then government (of the National Democratic Alliance) after terrorists targeted the Parliament House in December 2001.
The BJP leaders addressing the media just two days after the Delhi High Court blast was unfortunate given that India and its neighbourhood had to grapple with the scourge of terrorism, he said. “The day when the Delhi High Court blast took place, there was a terror attack in Quetta [in Pakistan]. There has been a long list of terror attacks in … July and August worldwide. India is under the shadow of terror. The epicentre of terror is Pakistan and Afghanistan. We live in a troubled and difficult neighbourhood. What can we do except building capacities brick by brick to pre-empt, prevent and respond to a terror attack,” the Home Minister asked.
On Mr. Jaitley's argument that six cases of terror incidents in the past three years were yet to be solved, Mr. Chidambaram sought to remind the BJP leader that “there are State governments in the country which handle such issues.”
The April 2010 blast in the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore was being probed by “the BJP government which he [Mr. Jaitley] had tried to save for several days,” he said. The case was not handed over to the National Investigation Agency as only a few were injured in the blast. The Varanasi blast was being probed by the Uttar Pradesh police, who said they could handle the case.
Saying that he was “disappointed” that these cases remained unsolved, Mr. Chidambaram also referred to the unresolved cases of the Delhi-Mehrauli blast, the Jama Masjid shootout and the May 25 blast outside the Delhi High Court. The Delhi Police, he said, were working hard to crack the unsolved cases.
