Taking the BJP's nationalism narrative in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls head-on, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said the Indian Army is not Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "personal property" and it should not be politicised as he also slammed the government on tackling terror, citing JeM chief Masood Azhar's release during the NDA rule.
Asserting that terrorism is a huge issue, Gandhi alleged that the BJP compromises on it, adding that the Congress will deal with it "more sternly" than Modi because it works with a strategy, rather than "events".
Addressing a press conference at the party headquarters here, he also hit out at the prime minister over his remarks that the Congress conducted surgical strikes only "on paper" and the leaders of the opposition party thought those were akin to video games.
Gandhi said Modi's comments were not an insult to the Congress, but to the Army.
Asked about the prime minister invoking Masood Azhar's designation as a global terrorist by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) at a poll rally soon after the decision was announced, the Congress president said the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief is a terrorist and the strictest action should be taken against him.
"Who had sent him there? He is being designated, but who sent him there in the first place? How did he reach Pakistan? Has the Congress party sent him to Pakistan? Which government had negotiated with terrorism, bowed in front of terrorism, who sent him back?," he asked, alluding to Azhar's release in the Kandahar hijacking case during the NDA rule in 1999.
"The Congress did not send him (Azhar) back. The reality is that the BJP compromises (with terrorism). The Congress has never done such a thing. The Congress party has never sent a terrorist to Pakistan and will never do so," Gandhi, who was flanked by senior Congress leaders P Chidambaram, Ahmed Patel, Anand Sharma and Randeep Surjewala, said.
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Azhar and two other terrorists -- Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh -- were released by the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government in exchange for the passengers held hostage on board Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Then foreign minister Jaswant Singh had accompanied Azhar in a special aircraft and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, then a top Intelligence Bureau (IB) official, was in Kandahar as part of India's negotiating team when the terrorists were handed over.
Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of taking credit for the Army's actions and ignoring key issues such as unemployment and agrarian distress, Gandhi said, "Modi thinks the Army, Navy and Air Force are his personal property."