They can’t distinguish between ISI and BJP!
It appears that all the tutorials that senior Congress leaders conduct for their media managers and spokespersons have been going in vain. Party leaders continue to make ridiculous remarks that are often also outrageous in nature. Once the words are out and the damage done, senior Congress leaders enter to douse the flames of controversy by issuing ‘clarifications'. It has happened so often that people have begun to see through the game and are now unwilling to give the loudmouths the benefit of doubt. They have even begun to wonder if the classes these spokespersons attend actually teach them to be atrocious in their verbal attacks. Party leader Shakeel Ahmed's recent remark placing the Bharatiya Janata Party and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence on par is only the latest instance of Congress spokespersons' stupidity. Mr Ahmed, always quick to drag in the main Opposition even in a discourse that deals with issues of national security, has said that both the ISI and the BJP “rejoice” when communal disturbances break out in the country. In his view, therefore, the two are equally abominable. He seems to forget that the BJP is a registered, responsible national party which has ruled the country as the head of the National Democratic Alliance. like other parties, it too represents the national interest. It is indeed disgraceful and petty for a Congress leader, and a senior one at that, to equate the party with the ISI which has been working to destroy the stability and integrity of the country. It is obvious that he said what he did purely with the intention to score political points, even if it meant giving a handle to anti-India elements across the border to ridicule us. But Mr Ahmed has forgotten the role the Congress has played in stoking communal riots in the recent past, or fiddling while sectarian movements pushed people out of their homes and States. The anti-Sikh violence in 1984 not only happened under the regime of the Congress at the Centre but that many of its prominent leaders were allegedly behind the massacre of thousands of innocent men, women and children from the Sikh community. Some of these leaders, despite the terrible blot, were subsequently rewarded with ministerial positions. let us not forget that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who led the violent separatist movement in Punjab and caused deep social divisions, was created by the Congress.
Again, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when hardline separatist leaders led the violent drive against Kashmiri Pandits residing in Jammu & Kashmir, the Congress did nothing except express hollow anguish. Several thousand Pandits had to flee their homes and many of them to date continue to live outside the State as refugees in their own country. Although the Congress rules J&K in alliance with the National Conference, it has done nothing to develop the environment that would create confidence among the Pandits to return to their homeland.