Former Home Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, recently decided to take to twitter to claim that the hard-line approach taken by the Modi government, when it comes to terror in Kashmir has not really worked out:
5. It was claimed that the hard, muscular, militaristic approach will put an end to infiltration and militancy. Has it? pic.twitter.com/AkT6ESrbJe
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) January 7, 2018
Chidambaram tried to insinuate that the ‘high handed approach’ against the terror establishment in Kashmir has failed to eliminate infiltration and militancy. One instance he provided to prove his narrative was the attack on CRPF Training Centre in Pulwama which resulted in the deaths of five CRPF personnel.
The table provided by Chidambaram also possibly tried to highlight the rising civilian deaths in 2017 and a continually high death toll of Security forces since the Modi government came to power.
Thus according to him, the key to the Kashmir problem lies in finding a political solution to the problem:
6. Wisdom lies in actively working to find a political solution to the issue of J&K. Both Mr A B Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh will be remembered for their diligent efforts to find a solution to the issue.
— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) January 7, 2018
He thereby decided to also partially support the appointment of Dineshwar Sharma as Special Representative (SR) who is acting as the interlocutor in the valley.
This ‘denunciation’ of a hard-line approach to terror in the valley was subsequently called out by a twitter user operating the @srirambjp twitter handle.
As per Sriram, Chidambaram’s analysis was sloppy and take-down reeked of an agenda, he thus announced that he would be busting those claims:
Mr Chidambaram,
I have looked into the Table presented by you. Your analysis is sloppy and your takedown screams agenda. It is Data debauchery.Let me tear down your 9 tweet take down with a 18 tweet chain. Here we go! https://t.co/s3iA43gdlV
— Sriram (@srirambjp) January 9, 2018
He as a result decided to compare the Modi government’s data provided by Chidambaram to that of the one during the UPA era:
As seen from the above figure, even though the Modi government has gone very strong against terror (by Chidambaram’s own admission), the number of civilians killed during Modi government’s tenure of 2014-17, was still lower than the corresponding period of 2010-13 when the UPA government was in power.
Even though the civilian deaths during the Modi government were less than the corresponding UPA period, the number of terrorist killed were 125 more and stood at 574. Hence the data in totality busts Chidambaram’s claim that an assault on terror leads to more casualties on our side.
He also accused Chidambaram of being selective in putting out the data as the Modi government had to deal with a higher number of cross border violations by Pakistan, even after which the civilian casualty ranked lower:
10. ? Mr PC, Your Table doesn’t reflect the fact, Cross-LoC violations by Pak Army regulars have been at- Unusual high during this period. Strong fight-back by Forces lead to significant Pak Army Casualties. Pak Army/ISPR do not admit numbers, Pak media screaming headlines do?pic.twitter.com/gQ4qoTYbEI
— Sriram (@srirambjp) January 9, 2018
Sriram also pointed out how the security forces have been successful in eliminating the top leadership of terror groups functioning in Kashmir.
8. ?Terror Leadership Eliminated:
Kill list of 258 Most wanted made and Top Commanders of LeT & Hizbul Killed including;
Burhan Wani
Abu Dujana
Bashir Lashkari
Sabzar Ahmed Bhat
Sajad Gilkar
Abu Haris
Abu Ali
Abu Mala
Anis Bhai
Abu Mansoor
Abu Umar
Abu Maviya
Sher Gujri— Sriram (@srirambjp) January 9, 2018
During the course of the debate, he also highlighted the controversial positions taken by Chidambaram on Kashmir like wanting to remove AFSPA and calling for ‘greater autonomy’ for Kashmir (to name a few), which might lead a few to question whether Chidambaram has the best Indian interests in his mind when he talks about this issue?
The argument was concluded by Sriram on a positive note by highlighting the security forces’ success in eliminating two terrorists:
18. While I am composing this tweet series, I got a breaking news alert;
2 Terrorists were gunned down by Security Forces in Anantnag’s Larnoo.✊Jai Hind ??pic.twitter.com/JICZ9EzkMu
— Sriram (@srirambjp) January 9, 2018
This approach by Chidambaram raises the question whether he was merely virtue signalling over the Kashmir issue by furthering the ‘peace and reconciliation’ narrative, or whether discrediting the military efforts in Kashmir was his way of discrediting the Modi government thereby compromising security for political ends?
