By IANS,
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the chief minister’s meeting on internal security Tuesday “amply suggest that the country has lost severely on the terror front”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said.
“The words of the prime minister amply suggest that the country has lost severely on the terror front and a last ditch effort is being attempted to retrieve the situation,” BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said in a statement.
Describing the prime minister’s remarks as “a reluctant admittance that the government has acted too late”, the BJP said: “The prime minister has failed to even remotely acknowledge the sprinkling of Bangladeshi nationals across the country and the larger issue of infiltration in particular.”
Criticising the government for using the phrase ‘non-state actors’ to refer to the Nov 26 Mumbai terrorists, the BJP said: “There is ample evidence that there is only one state actor which is Pakistan using its official agencies to unleash and perpetrate terror across the boundary.
“The country would like to know what is the threshold for the government and how long would the country have to wait while Pakistan stands belligerent stating insufficient evidence.”
The party also criticised Manmohan Singh for keeping “mum on the GujCOC (the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Bill, 2003)”, passed by the Gujarat assembly to check terrorism but awaiting the president’s assent.
“While the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) stands amended to incorporate stringent terror provisions the prime minister has yet preferred to keep mum on the GujCOC, which had been denied Presidential assent on behest of the union government as ‘too tough a law’,” the statement said.
Citing the terror attack in Assam on Jan 1 and the ongoing gun battle with terrorists in Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP said: “The situation seems dismal on the homeland security.