New Delhi:- Union Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore had a meeting with Home Minister Rajnath Singh against the backdrop of his comments over Army’s surgical strikes in Myanmar that was also dubbed by opposition parties as “boastful” and “chest thumping”.
Rathore was closeted with Singh for about 20 minutes last evening soon after the Home Minister chaired a high level meeting to take stock of the situation arising out of the killing of 18 army personnel on June 4 and the cross-border operation on camps of Northeast militants.
“It was a much-needed decision that was taken by the Prime Minister. This decision was extremely bold in nature. And it involved our Special Forces crossing the border and going deep into another country,” said Rathore, a retired Colonel on Tuesday night on the day of Army’s first of its kind operation.
Rathore, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, also chose #56inchRocks as hash-tag in his tweets to send out a message that the action was possible only because of the Prime Minister’s courage.
These comments by Rathore were slammed by opposition parties with Congress terming it as “boastful and jingoistic” and also asked Modi to counsel his ministers to avoid “chest thumping”.
The parties also felt that the kind of statements made by the Union Ministers since the pre-dawn strike are not going to help the operations of India’s special forces.
Meanwhile, there was no clarity yet on the number of casualties inflicted during the Army operations.
However, official sources based on inputs provided by authorities in Manipur claimed that after the Army strike, 19 bodies of the militants were buried at the spot by their colleagues while 49 bodies were taken away by militants to an undisclosed place. 60 others were critically injured in the operation, they said.
The sources said most of the killed militants belonged to Manipur’s People’s Liberation Army and Manipur Naga Revolutionary Front while just one belonged to the NSCN (Khaplang).
Officials were unwilling to come on record on the exact number of casualties.
NSCN-K has challenged the Government to display the pictures of the cross-border operation.
PTI
