Himalaya Harbinger, Uttarakhand Bureau.
Congress leader Udit Raj on Wednesday criticised party colleague and lawmaker Shashi Tharoor over his comments that India breached the Line of Control (LoC) for the first time during the 2016 surgical strike, saying he should be declared “super spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)”.
The comments against Tharoor assume great significance as Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh and media head Pawan Khera reposted Raj’s comments on X. The remarks came as Tharoor led a multi-party delegation to the United States, Panama, Guyana, Brazil and Colombia, as part of a global outreach programme to garner support against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism
Raj, in his post on X, described Tharoor as “dishonest” and slammed for “denigrating the golden history of Congress”. “…I could prevail upon PM Modi to declare you as super spokesperson of BJP, even declaring as foreign minister before landing in India. How could you denigrate the golden history of Congress by saying that before PM Modi, India never crossed LoC and International border,” he said on X.
The remarks came a day after Tharoor said that India, for the first time, breached LoC to conduct a surgical strike in 2016 in response to the Uri attack. “What has changed in recent years is that the terrorists have also realised they will have a price to pay, on that, let there be no doubt,” he said during an interaction in Panama, the clip of which was shared by Raj in his X post. “When, for the first time, India breached the LoC between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launch pad – the Uri strike in September 2016. That was already something we had not done before.”
“Even during the Kargil War, we had not crossed the Line of Control; in Uri, we did, and then came the attack in Pulwama in January 2019. This time, we crossed not only the Line of Control but also the international border, and we struck the terrorist headquarters in Balakot. This time, we have gone beyond both of those. We have not only gone beyond the Line of Control and the international border. We have struck at the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan by hitting terror bases, training centres, terror headquarters in nine places,” he added.
Raj, who is the chairman of the Unorganised Workers and Employees Congress Other Than Professionals, pointed out that the Indian Army entered Pakistan at multiple points in during the 1965 war. “In 1971, India tore Pakistan in two pieces and during UPA Govt several surgical strikes were unleashed but drum beating was not done to encash politically,” he said. “How could you be so dishonest to the party which gave you so much?”
Khera, tagging Tharoor in a separate post on X , emphasised that surgical strikes were not new to the current government. In his post, Khera shared a clip of an interview of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said that India conducted multiple surgical strikes during the UPA goverment.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that Tharoor was being attacked for keeping national interests first. “He talked about national interest, not his party’s interest. He is being attacked because he kept national policy above the vote bank (politics),” BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla told news agency PTI.
The development comes days after the inclusion of Tharoor in the multi-party delegations sparked a controversy, as the Congress did not nominate the Thiruvananthapuram MP to the Centre for the outreach programme.
