New Delhi: Giving a big embarrassment to the party, Congress senior leader Manish Tewari has written a book titled '10 Flash Points; 20 Years - National Security Situations that Impacted India'. Even before the launch, the book has run into controversy with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finding it as a tool to ridicule Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
However, in a tit-for-tat reply on Tuesday evening, Tiwari thanked 'all his publicists, especially the BJP' His tweet read: I thank all my Self appointed Publicists especially @BJP4India for giving one para of my yet to be released book kind of saturation space, albeit un-contextualised. I wonder how these headless chickens will catch their own tails when the book is released & shoe is on other foot."
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I thank all my Self appointed Publicists especially @BJP4India for giving one para of my yet to be released book kind of saturation space,albeit un - contextualised.I wonder how these headless chickens will catch their own tails when the book is released & shoe is on other foot🤪
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) November 23, 2021 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="
">I thank all my Self appointed Publicists especially @BJP4India for giving one para of my yet to be released book kind of saturation space,albeit un - contextualised.I wonder how these headless chickens will catch their own tails when the book is released & shoe is on other foot🤪
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) November 23, 2021I thank all my Self appointed Publicists especially @BJP4India for giving one para of my yet to be released book kind of saturation space,albeit un - contextualised.I wonder how these headless chickens will catch their own tails when the book is released & shoe is on other foot🤪
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) November 23, 2021
As the very name suggests, the book talks about prominent national security situations that the nation has faced, especially the Mumbai 26/11 attacks.
In the book, the Congress leader has said that the restraint practised by the UPA-led government during the 26/11 attacks proved to be a bad choice and became a 'weakness' instead of a 'strength'. He also said that sometimes, actions ought to speak louder than words, and these attacks were one such time. But instead of giving a kinetic response, the UPA government made the mistake of going 'soft' on the terrorists.
"For a state that has no compunctions in brutally slaughtering hundreds of innocent people, restraint is not a sign of strength; it is perceived as a symbol of weakness," the Congress leader has said in his book.
The 26/11 attacks were executed by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in India in 2008. The entire city of Mumbai was under attack with coordinated shootings and bomb attacks orchestrated at several prime locations in Mumbai. Around 300 people were injured and 166 were killed during this brutal terrorist attack in the financial capital of India.
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Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has now taken up Tiwari's observations in the book to prove how 'useless was UPA government to the country'.
Taking a dig at the Congress party, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia held a press conference and said that the book concludes and confirms that the Congress government was absolutely useless. He further added that the government should have acted promptly at that time, and it saddens him that because of the incapabilities of the UPA government, the whole nation suffered.
He also said that until now, it was the public and the Congress rival parties that criticised the party for compromising with the nation's security during the 26/11 attacks. But now, a senior leader from the party himself has agreed that the authorities could have been more vigilant and saved the lives of hundreds of Indians who died.
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He asked Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to be accountable for their party's past actions and speak up. He asked them for an explanation as to why the IAF authorities were not given the permissions to strike. He further clarified that the IAF was ready to strike and had even asked the then prime minister Manmohan Singh for the permission, but it was denied on the orders of Sonia Gandhi.
Tewari is the second Congress leader to land in controversy over a book, following senior leader Salman Khurshid who published "Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in our Times".
In his book, Tewari also slammed what the BJP-led central government did to India's national security.
He wrote: "In July 2018, the defence and finance ministers of the subsequent Modi-led government shelved all the plans of raising a mountain strike corps against China citing financial constraints. Mounting pressure on the LAC leading to the Doklam crisis in 2017 could have been averted, provided the mountain strike corps would have been raised, trained, resourced and efficaciously deployed. Scrapping the mountain strike corps is perhaps the greatest disservice that this government did to India's national security."
