'Called Indira Ji Durga': Harivansh slams Rahul Gandhi for remarks over Operation Sindoor, cites Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 1971 example
Harivansh
on Friday advised Congress leader
Rahul Gandhi
to exercise caution in his remarks questioning the Centre and the armed forces over Operation Sindoor.
Harivansh cited the example of
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
, who did not protest against former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the 1971 war with Pakistan.
"There cannot be a more shocking, sad, and uninformative statement than this. This is the time when we all should stand together," Rajya Sabha deputy chairman said.
"When the 1971 war took place, it was widely publicised that Atal Ji called Indira Ji 'Durga'. The reality was that Atal Ji did not say that, but he also did not protest at that time. Today, the situation is such that the whole country has to stand united... Pakistan's DGMO called our DGMO for a ceasefire.
Pakistan's DGMO surrendered, and we are not ready to listen to our army. Former NSA Shivshankar Menon's book mentions that after the Mumbai attack in 2008, where 166 people were killed, there was silence—whose government was in power then?" he added.
Harivansh also reminded Rahul that the UPA government allegedly hid the news of terrorists beheading a soldier near the Pakistan border, while then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama.
"Brahma Chellaney wrote in 2013 that terrorists beheaded our soldiers in the Keran sector near the Pakistan border. At that time, the Prime Minister was in America and was to meet then US President Obama. This news was hidden from the country," Harivansh said.
"Do not go into the past, otherwise I will mention 2,500 incidents from 2004 to 2014. There were thousands of such occasions when you should have taken action, but did not," he added.
This comes after Rahul Gandhi, in a social media post, claimed that India's foreign policy has collapsed under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to explain why India has been hyphenated with Pakistan, and who asked U.S. President Donald Trump to "mediate" between the two South Asian neighbours.
This follows Rahul's claim that the Centre informed Pakistan "at the start" of Operation Sindoor and stated that this was not a "lapse" but a "crime."
On May 17, Rahul shared an undated video of Jaishankar in which the minister is heard saying that "India had warned Pakistan before launching strikes" on terror infrastructure.
The MEA clarified that the government had warned Pakistan during the "early phase after Operation Sindoor's commencement," not before it began. It noted that Jaishankar had said, "We had warned Pakistan at the start, which is clearly the early phase after Op Sindoor's commencement."
"This is being falsely represented as a warning issued before the commencement. This utter misrepresentation of facts is being called out," the ministry added.
Operation Sindoor was launched on May 7, targeting terror bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the deadly Pahalgam terror attack on April 22.
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