A day after the Pulwama attack, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said his party and the entire Opposition is fully supportive of the Government and the security forces.
No amount of hatred and anger can harm the love India is built on, Gandhi said at a Press conference along with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other Congress leaders, including Ghulam Nabi Azad and AK Antony.
“This is a terrible attack, this type of violence is disgusting. Terrorism tries to divide the nation, we can’t be divided by any power. The entire opposition is with security forces and the Government,” Gandhi said.
“Those who have done this should not feel that they can harm the country. It is a time of mourning and sadness,” he added.
Singh said the nation can never compromise with terrorism.
“Terrorism is a scourge which we can never compromise...,” the former Prime Minister said.
On Thursday, an explosives laden truck rammed into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama outside Srinagar, killing 37 soldiers in one of the biggest terror attacks in recent years.
Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Friday said the Pulwama terror attack was an attack on the nation and there should be no attempts to politicise the issue. The former Union minister also took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over some of the latter’s statements after such attacks during the Congress-led UPA regime.
Speaking to reporters on home turf Baramati in Pune district, Pawar called Thursday’s attack on the CRPF convoy in Jammu and Kashmir as an attack on the nation.
“I can remember, Prime Minister Modi, before coming to power, used to say in his election rallies that (then PM) Manmohan Singh’s government had failed to teach Pakistan a lesson (after such attacks).
“He (Modi) used to say the Manmohan Singh government did not have ability to teach a lesson (to Pakistan). He also used to remark that only those with a 56-inch chest could administer a tough lesson to Pakistan,” Pawar said.
Modi, in his rallies, used to exhort people to replace the UPA government with that of the BJP so that Pakistan could be given a befitting reply for such terror attacks, Pawar told reporters.
“But everyone has seen what has happened now. But today I will not repeat that same demand which he (Modi) had made (at that time),” Pawar said. The kind of image that Modi created of himself in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls had now become a “100 per cent failure”, he said.
The hand of state players in Pakistan cannot be ruled out in the Pulwama attack looking at its magnitude and explosives used, Pawar said. Having such capabilities was not possible for common persons or outfits, he added.