The Congress has adopted an exceptionally tough stand on the killing of Indian soldiers by Chinese forces in Ladakh, asking the government to fix accountability for the decision to send them “unarmed to martyrdom”.
There are enough indications that Opposition leaders will ask tough questions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the all-party meeting on Friday by stressing that the government mishandled the situation and nothing short of restoration of status quo would be acceptable. The leaders plan to tell the Prime Minister that his attempts to befriend China had failed to yield results and business as usual with the neighbour would be impossible in the future.
At least 20 Indian soldiers, including a colonel, were killed by Chinese troops during a combat at the Galwan Valley on Monday evening. In the absence of government clarity on the incident, defence sources have been saying since Tuesday that the slain Indian soldiers were unarmed.
Senior Congress leaders told The Telegraph that the failure was both on political as well as tactical fronts and Modi would have to explain such an outcome after six years of “unusual bonhomie” between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A former minister said on condition of anonymity, as he didn’t want to pre-empt the party’s formal position at Friday’s meeting: “We need answers for the failure in reading the Chinese mind as they had sent troops with strategic intent of encroaching on our territory and a plan to change the status quo (at the border). Why was the government in denial about the intrusion?”
Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor, a former minister of state for external affairs, explained the government’s failures. “Why could we not politically defuse the situation sooner? Did the government not anticipate what the Chinese were doing? After all, it didn’t happen overnight. There was a build-up over several weeks. Were there adequate intelligence inputs, was there adequate surveillance, were reinforcements anticipated? Was it wise to allow our soldiers to go in unprotected?” he wondered.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi set the tone through a video message in the morning.
The wife of Col Santosh Babu, the commanding officer who was killed in Ladakh on Monday, mourns near his mortal remains at their home in Suryapet, Telangana, on Thursday. (PTI)
“China has committed a very big crime by murdering our unarmed soldiers. I want to ask who sent our brave soldiers into danger without arms? Why were they sent unarmed? Who is responsible?” he asked.
The MP, who has been seeking clarification from the government for long on the border tensions and who on Wednesday asked Modi not to “hide” or be “frightened”, later tweeted: “How dare China kill our UNARMED soldiers? Why were our soldiers sent UNARMED to martyrdom?”
Later in the day, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar responded to Rahul’s allegation by saying that all Indian troops on border duty carry arms, but the armies of both India and China do not use them in line with provisions of two bilateral agreements signed in 1996 and 2005.
Congress leaders, however, insisted that what happened in eastern Ladakh on Monday was not normal patrolling but an armed intrusion into Indian territory. They said considering a tense standoff after 40 days of forcible encroachment of land as normal patrolling was unthinkable.
Rahul on Thursday shared on social media a video clip of an interview given by Lt Gen. H.S. Panag, who once headed the Indian Army in the region, in which the army veteran had argued that the Chinese deliberately wanted to humiliate Indian soldiers and the clubbing to death of an “unarmed” colonel was the worst incident in the history of the Indian Army.
Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala and general secretary K.C. Venugopal said in a statement: “China’s action is unforgivable. The entire country is anguished; people are in anger and pain. The premeditated attack on our unarmed soldiers, killing them so brutally using lethal weapons, is a crime by the Chinese our 130 crore people will never forget. This is unacceptable.
“The Prime Minister and the defence minister must answer: Why were our officer and soldiers sent to the enemy unarmed? Which higher official gave this order to the soldiers? When our soldiers were being sent unarmed, then why back-up force was not made available under the defined protocol? If there was a back-up force, why was it not sent?
“Why did the government not have advance information about the Chinese conspiracy? Isn’t the inability to read Chinese intention a symbol of government’s failure? Our soldiers had to pay with their lives for the failure of a government that boasts of being a strong regime day and night.”