BJP uses patriot label to muzzle dissent — Cong

Intensifying the war of words against the BJP, Pilot accused the BJP and the government of “setting a dangerous trend by politicising the Army.” “Whenever we ask the government to tell us what went wrong in Kargil, they say that the Army has already answered or will answer that question…they even took the unprecedented step of asking Army Generals to brief the BJP national executive,” he said.

“Till now, the Prime Minister has not answered the only question being posed to him — and that is — when did he first come to know of the intrusions across the Line of Control,” he added.

Pilot said that the Army, which had fought valiantly, should not be dragged into politics. “It is for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and not the Army to tell the nation what happened and what went wrong in Kargil,” he said.

Pilot charged the government with forcing a reduction in the frequency of army patrolling on the border as well as in the number of air reconnaissance missions due to cuts in the budgetary allocation for defence.

Moreover, he said, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) — the nodal agency for collecting and interpreting intelligence inputs from various agencies — was allowed to remain headless for many months. “The JIC was ignored by the government. Let the Prime Minister tell us how many times he was briefed by the JIC on the Kashmir situation,” he said.

Accusing the government of inducing a sense of complacency in the aftermath of the Lahore Declaration, Pilot said that the probe, which had now been ordered was an eyewash, going by the terms of reference and non-statutory status of the inquiry committee.

With Kargil having become one of the key issues on which the coming elections are to be fought, the fielding of Pilot in an official press briefing reflects the party’s urgency to step up its offensive against the government.

Till now, the party’s tirade against the government on Kargil was being handled by party spokespersons Kapil Sibal and Ajit Jogi.

Pilot is the first senior Congress leader fielded by the party to take on the government on the Kargil issue in an official press briefing since the CWC recently decided to counter the BJP on the Kargil issue. The BJP has been proclaiming Kargil as a victory for the government and for Vajpayee.

Meanwhile, the party today objected to the sanction accorded by the government to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for Nature to set up a regional office in the country on the grounds that the organisation had in a recent report depicted the borders wrongly, in particular Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. Party spokesperson Ajit Jogi called for a withdrawal of the sanction given to WWF as also the maps in circulation.