Parrikar slams Congress for 'doubting' surgical strikes
Panaji, July 16 : Slamming the opposition for spreading scepticism and negativity, former Defence Minister and Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday asked if the Congress would have believed in the surgical strikes if the Army had taken its President Rahul Gandhi along on the mission.
"I am not speaking about the surgical strikes in a political manner. What do the opposition parties claim? That they (strikes) were not carried out. Look at the negativity. Should I have taken you (opposition) along? I should have told the army to take Rahul Gandhi along and carry out the surgical strikes?" Parrikar told a meeting of party workers here as part of the preparations for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
"The most important thing about surgical strikes is the secrecy. Only four of us knew. The Prime Minister, me, Army chief and the Director General of Military Operations. Four of us in Delhi and core commander and army commander in Srinagar and those who executed it.
"We had to prepare for it early on, because these things can't be done on the spot," the former Defence Minister said, urging the party workers to reach out to the people and create a positive atmosphere.
The Chief Minister also said that his mother's wisdom of preparing extensively for any eventuality was one of the factors which inspired him and his Defence Ministry to be fully prepared ahead of the actual strikes.
"My mother used to say, the press should not interpret it wrongly... When you go hunting for rabbits, you should be prepared for a tiger. So, when we were preparing for a surgical strike, we were in all readiness. But there was scepticism about that too," Parrikar said.
Parrikar was the Defence Minister when the two surgical strikes were conducted by the Indian armed forces on the country's eastern and western fronts.
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Kumaraswamy to visit Andrew Yule's tea gardens in Assam soon
Guwahati(PTI): Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Monday said he would soon visit tea gardens, owned by public sector enterprise Andrew Yule, to revive its estates as workers are facing immense hardship.
Kumaraswamy, the minister of steel and heavy industries, thanked Assam Industries Minister Bimal Borah for apprising him of various challenges being faced by the tea gardens and the need to support the management to alleviate suffering of workers.
"We are concerned about the economic challenges and hardship of the tea gardens owned by Andrew Yule Group in Assam and its impact on the wage earners," Kumaraswamy said at a press conference here.
The tea garden wage earners will also get a 20 per cent Durga Puja bonus, like workers of other gardens, he said.
Referring to his recent visit to the Cement Corporation of India Ltd factory at Bokajan in Karbi Anglong district, Kumaraswamy said there was a plan for the revival of the cement industry in the state by investing Rs 700 crore.
He also emphasised on the need for a cement manufacturing unit in the northeastern states.
On the current development of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) policy utilisation in Assam, the union minister said more than Rs 2,000 crore would be invested for battery charging stations and nearly 70,000 such facilities will be set up across the country.
More than 18,000 e-buses will also be purchased to fulfil the goal of carbon emission reduction, Kumaraswamy added.
