archive: No case at all
No case at all
Editorial
The Pioneer
June 30, 1999
Title: No case at all
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 30, 1999
While not rejecting it outright, the Government has done well not to
be hustled into conceding the demand, made at Monday's all-party
meeting, for a special session of the Rajya Sabha to discuss the
intrusion in Kargil. As pointed out earlier in these columns, there is
absolutely no need for such a session demanded by the Congress and
most other opposition parties; it can in no way help in accomplishing
the immediate task at hand, which is throwing out the intruding
Pakistani Army regulars and the mercenaries trained by them. On the
contrary, it will only serve to boost the sagging morale of a
diplomatically isolated Pakistan, and demoralise the Indian fighting
forces, by projecting the image of an India divided and a campaign
waged incompetently. That this is most likely to be so becomes clear
on considering the pronouncements of various opposition leaders which
leave one in no doubt that they are calling for the session merely to
embarrass the Government and score political points with the
forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in mind. To cite only one example,
addressing a Congress rally at Mau on Monday, no less a person than
the Congress president, Ms Sonia Gandhi, blamed the BJP Government for
the large-scale intrusion in Kargil and declared, "We cannot leave the
fate of the country in the hands of an incompetent caretaker
Government and hence we (the Congress) have demanded a special session
of the Rajya Sabha to discuss the prevailing situation on the
frontier." After this, one will have to be rather dimwitted to believe
that a Rajya Sabha session to discuss the Kargil issue will do no more
than record the nation's unified resolve to expel the intruders at all
cost and stand firmly behind the Armed forces.
There might have been a case for calling a special session of the
Rajya Sabha had the Government been making a mess of the job of
clearing intruders. Precisely the opposite is the case. The Indian
Army has already regained several strategic peaks and ridges in the
Dras-Kargil-Batalik sector in the teeth of heavy odds, and is poised
to push the intruders back to the Line of Control (LoC). Indian
soldiers are now much better armed and equipped than in 1962 when they
had to fight the numerically vastly superior Chinese with inadequate
and antiquated weapons and without air support; massive air strikes
were ordered in the present case as soon as it was felt necessary.
Whatever residual reasons there might have been for calling a special
session were removed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
assurance to Monday's all-party meeting that the Government was
neither making any secret deals with Pakistan nor willing to accept
any third-party mediation to de-escalate tensions along the LoC.
Though there was no real need to provide either given the Government's
public pronouncements on the fighting in Kargil and the diplomatic
efforts being made to end it, a categorical statement by Mr Vajpayee
should put to rest whatever misgivings some opposition leaders may
have genuinely harboured. Such questions as may still remain, or such
as may arise in the course of the next few days, can be raised at the
chief ministers' meeting which is to be held in the first week of July
and in other meetings with the opposition which Mr Vajpayee has
promised.
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