Kharge flays Modi for skipping all-party meet on Pahalgam attack
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday flayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not attending the all-party meeting on the Pa-halgam terror attack and claimed that the govern-ment had admitted to security lapses in the meeting held in Delhi.
Bengaluru : Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Saturday flayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not attending the all-party meeting on the Pa-halgam terror attack and claimed that the govern-ment had admitted to security lapses in the meeting held in Delhi.
With regard to the suspension of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan, he asked the govern-ment where it would store the water and main-tained that these issues would be raised later and not now. Kharge said leaders from all political par-ties were present, including him and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, at the all-party meeting. "The first question I raised in the meeting was that when the government convenes a meeting, the prime minister should have been present. Since he was not present, we said it was not right," he told reporters here. The Congress president said the prime minister's attitude to-wards the all-party meeting was not proper when at least 26 people lost their lives and many others sustained injuries.
He also hit out at PM Modi for addressing an election rally in poll-bound Bihar ra-ther than attending the all-party meeting. "You go to deliver your election speech in Bihar. If he (Modi) is not attending the meeting then it means that he is not serious about it," Kharge said.
"In-stead of speaking in Hindi and English, you should have spoken to us about what and how it (terror strike) happened, security lapse, intelligence lapse, or lapse on the part of informants and police. Un-fortunately he did not turn up," he said. The AICC president said that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who chaired the meeting, admitted that there was a security lapse in the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people were killed. Kharge said he also told Union Home Minister Amit Shah to take this issue as a challenge and make arrange-ments that such incidents are not repeated. "Whatever lapse has happened has happened, but in the future we should not let this happen.
I told Shah that this should be taken up as a challenge. Everything should be properly arranged," he said. He also said that Shah assured the all-party dele-gation that such incidents will not happen in the future. Despite a three-tier security system, the government could not protect people, Kharge rued.
