Bengal governor Keshari Nath Tripathi on Sunday referred to the Indian Air Force strikes at Balakot.

“There are people inside and outside the country who are raising questions about what our sena did. How many bombs they dropped and how many people were killed,” Tripathi said at a programme.

For those “questioning the valour of our forces, I have one thing to say,” the governor said and recited a poem.

Two lines of the poem were: “Hamari asteen ke saanpon, hame ab kato mat, varna doodh pilane ki jagah maut ki dawat ayegi (the snakes in our sleeves, don’t bite us now. Otherwise, instead of being fed with milk, the invitation of death will arrive).”

Elsewhere, others have made attempts to construe questions about the air strike and appeals to the Narendra Modi government to not politicise the operation as criticism of the defence forces.

But what has been questioned mainly are the casualty figures cited by unnamed sources and politically loaded statements of the Prime Minister, some BJP leaders and allies. NDA ally Ram Vilas Paswan told a rally in Patna on Sunday that “the way we have won the battle of bullet, we will also win the battle of ballots in the Lok Sabha polls”.

On Thursday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had raised questions but there was no criticism of the defence forces. In fact, she was among the first leaders to publicly congratulate the Indian Air Force for the strikes.

“From day one, we heard on television, especially the national channels, that 300 people died, 350 people died, such a lot of things. We want to know, how much happened, what happened? Did anybody die at all? Where was the bombing undertaken? Did it at all land on the right place? Why mislead the people? What took place actually, we must know.... Nothing was done in five years, although Uri happened, Pathankot happened, nothing was done.”