Top 10 things Amit Shah said on Operation Sindoor in Lok Sabha

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday (July 29) addressed the Lok Sabha during the second day of the debate on Operation Sindoor. He said that all three terrorists involved in the Pahalgam terror attack were killed by security forces on Monday (July 28) in an encounter.

Here are the top 10 highlights of his speech:

1) Shah told the Lok Sabha that all three terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack have been eliminated by security forces in a joint operation by the Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police near Srinagar.

The Home Minister said the slain terrorists have been identified as Suleman alias Faizal, Afghani and Jibran.

"While Suleman was an A-category commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Afghani was also an A-category Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist. Jibran, too, was a notorious and wanted terrorist. All three terrorists involved in the killing of our citizens at Baisaran valley in Pahalgam have now been eliminated," he said.

2) Shah said in the run-up to Monday’s encounter, all measures were taken to be certain of the identity of the terrorists. Locals who used to provide food to the three terrorists were nabbed days earlier and were made to identify the three terrorists; ballistic and forensic analysis have also shown that the rifles recovered from the terrorists were the same rifles used in the Pahalgam attack.

3) Opposition MPs questioned the coincidence of the terrorists being killed on the day Lok Sabha started discussing Operation Sindoor. An enraged Shah hit back, saying he thought both sides of the political divide would have been happy to hear the news, but the Opposition is unhappy. In a pointed barb at Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, Shah said, "Don’t get unhappy seeing the religion of those killed".

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4) NIA questioned 1,055 people over a period of 3,000 hours to finally identify the three terrorists, the home minister said.

All three terrorists were Pakistani nationals. Two locals who provided shelter to the terrorists have also been nabbed, he added.

5) The Home Minister conceded that the responsibility of Pahalgam lies with the government, but questioned the Opposition whether it took responsibility for the attacks that happened when they were in power. Shah slammed former Union Home Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram for questioning why it was assumed that the three terrorists came from Pakistan.

"This means a former Home Minister of this country is giving a clean chit to Pakistan and also questioning the reason for India attacking Pakistan," Shah said and added this is a "conspiracy to save Pakistan".

6) During the discussion, the Opposition questioned why, instead of Pahalgam, Modi went to Bihar. "The day Modi went to Bihar, there was no one in Pahalgam except Rahul Gandhi because all affected (by the attack) had left Pahalgam," Shah said.

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Those who say Modi's speech in Bihar was a poll speech have lost their mental balance. These days, we are seeing many wars (around the world) in which children and women are being killed, but (in Operation Sindoor) we neutralised nine terror hubs, and not one civilian was harmed, he added.

7) Of the terrorists killed in Operation Sindoor, eight out of nine were those who planned attacks in India when Chidambaram and company were in power.

Shah reiterated that the Indian DGMO informed his Pakistani counterpart about Operation Sindoor after the nine terror sites were destroyed.

This is Narendra Modi's government, not Manmohan Singh's government, that will sit quietly after a terror attack, he said.

“We demolished eight Pakistan air bases so badly that their entire air defence system collapsed. When they attacked our civilian areas, we still attacked only their air defence systems and military infrastructure. Pakistan was left with no option but to surrender. This is why on May 10 they asked for a ceasefire and we accepted,” he added.

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8) The Opposition was asking why we didn't go to war when we were in such a good position. In 1949, despite Sardar Patel's repeated objections, Nehru declared a one-sided ceasefire and created Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK)... in 1971, Pakistan was broken in two, but what happened after that great victory? We had 93,000 PoWs and 15,000 sq km of Pakistan territory, but we gave it back without anything in return. Why didn't you ask for PoK in return, says Shah.

9) Some Congress MPs were asking about China. "I want to ask them what happened in the 1962 war. You (Congress) gave away Aksai Chin to China, and Nehru gave a non-serious answer, saying Aksai Chin is a barren area."

10) Nehru refused America's offer to give India a seat in the UNSC and said accepting the offer would sour India's ties with the "great nation of China". Nehru, Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi, through generations, have loved China.

When Doklam happened, Rahul Gandhi was meeting the Chinese Ambassador, Shah claimed.

The root cause of all this is Pakistan, and Pakistan was the blunder of Congress because it accepted Partition, he added.