Govts don’t give credit to army: Capt
Monday, 15/02/2016
http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=150088&boxid=62741&uid=&dat=2016-02-15
New Delhi: Punjab Congress Chief Captain Amarinder Singh has said governments do not give any ‘credit’ to the army, which has been making sacrifices daily to protect the borders and battle insurgency.
He also questioned the handling of the terror attack at Pathankot air force base, saying that the army is capable enough to deal with such situations. “An entire post of soldiers was lost in Siachen recently. Everyday there is a coffin coming back, whether it is an officer or a jawan from these counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir.
“I’m afraid this government or any government doesn’t seem to give any credit to the army,” the former Punjab chief minister said on Saturday evening during the session, ‘India at War’, as part of Delhi Gymkhana’s first literature festival here. He gave the example of the Pathankot terror attack, saying that the National Security Guard flown in to control the situation was ‘not trained’ for the task in contrast to the army, which had been put on hold by the Centre.
“In the case of Pathankot, where you have 50,000 troops, two armoured brigades and 39 divisions and you still have to send the blue-eyed boys of the NSG from here to carry out an operation for which they are not trained,” he said. The Amritsar MP, a former army officer, said that army units in Punjab had been drilled to tackle aircraft insurgencies in Kashmir, and would not need even a battalion to hunt down the terrorists who had attacked the airbase. “Our boys are doing this everyday. The army units have been through this aircraft insurgency in Kashmir. All that they needed to be told was ‘go and do it’ and they would have done it.
“Not even a battalion was needed to take on four terrorists. It was a small job which even a company or platoon could have handled,” Singh said.
