["The Congress has protested against the last-minute cancellation of a scheduled army briefing tomorrow on the recent surgical strikes to the parliamentary standing committee on defence, with two senior leaders dubbing it "highly unacceptable"."
So, not only any evidence of "surgical strikes" will be released to minimise the chances of retaliation from Pakistan, even a scheduled briefing by the Army to the Standing Committee meeting of the Defence on October 14 2016 stands cancelled.] http://www.telegraphindia.com/1161014/jsp/nation/story_113381.jsp MPs demand army briefing Our Special Correspondent New Delhi, Oct. 13: *The Congress has protested against the last-minute cancellation of a scheduled army briefing tomorrow on the recent surgical strikes to the parliamentary standing committee on defence, with two senior leaders dubbing it "highly unacceptable".* [Emphasis added.] In a joint statement, Ambika Soni and Madhusudan Mistry called for maintaining the "original agenda" of the meeting. "The last minute change of agenda of the forthcoming Standing Committee meeting of the Defence on October 14, 2016 is highly unacceptable. We are deeply disappointed over the change of agenda," the statement said. It added: "The original agenda was that the army officials would brief the committee members on the recently carried out surgical strikes and subsequently deliberate on the shortage of arms and ammunition for the defence forces. This has now been changed. We believe that the agenda must have been fixed after consultation with top officials of defence ministry. We see no reason why this has been changed and that too at the last minute." Although the agenda of House committee meetings are changed sometimes because of various reasons, the Congress believes this time it was done deliberately by the government to pre-empt questions on previous such strikes. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar's denial yesterday of similar cross-border operations in the past has triggered a verbal war between the Congress and the BJP and this issue would have dominated the standing committee meeting tomorrow. Although members of the committee don't talk about the meetings that are supposed to be confidential, a senior Congress leader told The Telegraph: "Our MPs would have naturally asked the army for details of similar surgical strikes in the past and the officials, unlike the BJP politicians, do not have any vested interest in hiding stories of their valour. The government forestalled this situation." Soni and Mistry revealed their plans for the meeting in their statement when they said: "We demand that the original agenda of the forthcoming committee meeting be maintained and also defence officials inform the committee about the number of surgical strikes carried out since 2004." The meeting would have witnessed fireworks as Congress members - Amarinder Singh and Abhishek Singhvi, apart from Soni and Misty - would have faced resistance from senior BJP members like Murli Manohar Joshi and Subramanian Swamy. The committee is headed by BJP veteran B.C. Khanduri, a former army man. Soni and Mistry stressed the importance of examining the preparedness of the army. The statement said: "It is our firm belief that the officials should brief the standing committee as they briefed the leaders of the opposition parties on the above issues. The decision not to brief the committee over (the) surgical strikes under the garb of secrecy only amounts to 'lack of confidence' in the members of Parliament, who are in the committee and who are bound by the oath of secrecy." The army officials had themselves confirmed a few days ago that they would brief the parliamentary committee on the strikes but would not share footage or visual evidence that may compromise operational details. The Congress statement said: "It is also unfortunate that we come to know the shortage of arms and ammunition to the 'Special Forces', who carried out (the) surgical strikes, from newspaper columns, but the army officials are not ready to discuss or answer queries to be raised in the meeting of standing committee members." The Congress leaders complained that the ministry never took the committee seriously and despite repeated formal mentions it never presented their policies and preparedness to meet emergency situations created by neighbouring countries. "The 'Make in India' initiative also seems to be a complete failure in the defence sector," the statement added. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
