Our forces implement government policies, Pakistan follows army's instructions: Congress

Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed on Monday said there is a huge difference between the armed forces of India and Pakistan in that the former implements the government's policies, while the latter follows their armed forces policies.

"There is a big difference between the two. In India, the armed forces implement decisions taken by the government and they have freehand at the border, the Line of Control, etc, where they need it. But, the government plays the main role in framing policies, whereas in Pakistan, their army decides the policy and the Government of Pakistan and the Pakistan Prime Minister works on the instructions of their army,"

Ahmed was responding to Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit's statement that Islamabad does not want a meaningless dialogue with India on Kashmir and that he did not think India can have a Pakistan policy without consulting its armed forces.

Basit told the Times of India in an interview, "When it comes to issues concerning India, Afghanistan and other issues which are security related... obviously our army or military has an important role to play. It has important inputs to give. So to expect that it will not have any role in Pakistan's India policy or Afghanistan policy and other such issues is incorrect. Do you believe India can have a Pakistan policy without consulting its armed forces or US can have a Pakistan or Afghanistan policy without consulting Pentagon? One should not be reading too much into these things."

On "Operation Ginger", Ahmed said, "Obviously there are all proofs of the operation - the date has been disclosed; the then Chief of the Army Staff also confirmed it publically in a television interview; Sharad Pawarji stated that there were four surgical strikes; and The Hindu, in which the report has been published, is a highly respected newspaper. The difference is, however, only that we did not try to cash in on the surgical strikes for political benefit like Modiji and his ministers because our army had done it on the instruction of the government and in the country's interest. We did not publicise it to win plaudits."

As per a report, the Indian Army did carry out surgical strikes across the LoC in retaliation to a surprise attack on an army post on the Gugaldhar Ridge in Kupwara in July 2011, which led to the death of 13 soldiers and a beheading of six of them. In retaliation, the Indian Army planned "Operation Ginger."

Major General (retired) S.K. Chakravorty, who executed "Operation Ginger", told ANI that the 2011 strike was a response to two cross-border surgical strikes by Pakistan.

"They (Pakistan) first conducted an operation, but action was done from their side. To take revenge of that, this operation was conducted," he said.

Major General (retired) Chakravorty admitted that all details regarding the 2011 operation were true and said that even the then DGMO and the then Army Chief General V.K. Singh had information about it, but refused to go into detail about it.