Center prefers vote bank politics as opposed to fighting militancy, says Arun Jaitley

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley today said the federal government had compromised with the fight against militancy for vote bank politics

Referring to the Ishrat Jahan case in Gujarat, Jaitley alleged that government wanted to designate Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) activists, as martyrs.

"The government is trying to make Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) activists as martyrs and put security agencies in the dock. How could it fight militancy? It can only indulge in vote bank politics," he said.

In 2004, police shot dead Ishrat Jahan and her three accomplices in Ahmedabad, claiming that they were LeT operatives out to assassinate Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

However, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed cases against Gujarat police and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers in court, alleging that it was a fake encounter.

In 2009, the central government retracted from its earlier statement in the Supreme Court that Ishrat Jahan was a militant.

Jaitley also justified disruption of parliament sessions over irregularities in the coal blocks allocations. He said if the BJP had not been aggressive in its opposition, the coalgate scam would not have come out in public.

The central government has struggled to defend itself against allegations that it awarded coalfields potentially worth billions of dollars to private and state power, cement and steel companies in a process that was corrupt and lacked transparency.