PM may deliver strong message to Pak today

KOZHIKODE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to break silence on the government’s response to Sunday’s terror attack on the army base in Uri. At a rally on Kozhikode beach on Saturday, the PM will deliver a strong message to Pakistan and also to separatists in Kashmir Valley, BJP sources indicated on Friday.

Immediately after the Uri attack, the PM had in a tweet vowed not to let the perpetrators go “unpunished”. Many ministers and BJP functionaries talked tough, with home minister Rajnath Singh terming Pakistan as a “terrorist state”.

But the government has refrained from directly blaming Pakistan for the attack, even as there is growing clamour for giving a befitting response. Modi is expected to delineate the broad contours of India’s response in his address on Kozhikode beach, which looked resplendent in saffron hues on Friday with fluttering BJP flags along the coastline and deep in the Arabian Sea waters.

In his address to party office-bearers here on Friday, BJP president Amit Shah said the party’s ideology brought it to power and it’s time to “walk the talk” on promises it made while in opposition. His remark was interpreted in party circles as an indirect reference to the BJP’s aggressive posturing against Pakistan in the past, accusing then PM Manmohan Singh of being “weak” in responding to terror attacks. Shah cautioned party colleagues that as the ruling party, the BJP has to “behave responsibly”.

Modi’s tough talk on Pakistan on Saturday will set the tone for the party resolution to be passed by its national council, the apex decision-making body, the next day. Shah is also expected to follow suit with aggressive rhetoric against Pakistan when he opens the party session on Sunday.

In an indication of the things to come in the next two days, the party fielded general secretary Ram Madhav—whose jaw-for-a-tooth demand following Uri attack pleased many a hardliner — to brief the media on Friday. “We appreciate and understand the sentiments of the country. So many things have happened in the past three days, especially diplomatically,” he said in response to a query about the NDA government’s plan of action post-Uri attack. He refused to field further questions about it saying, “Prateeksha mein anand hai (there is pleasure in waiting).”

Madhav’s evasive approach to questions about Uri attack was, said sources.

He was at pains to explain that while the party would discuss all contemporary issues (suggesting terror attack and unrest in Kashmir), its main focus was on the poor and the downtrodden. Opposition parties have been accusing the BJP and the NDA government of being anti-poor and anti-Dalit, citing the incident of suicide by Hyderabad university Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula last year and beating of Dalit youths at Una in Gujarat early this year.

Dalits constitute one-third of the electorate in Punjab and one-fifth in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand — the three states that will go to polls, along with Goa and Manipur--in February-March next year.