In a meeting held today, Prime minister Narendra Modi granted “full operational freedom” to the armed forces in light of the Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir last week; a terror operation carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba’s ‘The Resistance Front’ that killed 26 innocent tourists. The meeting is the second of its kinds in a week.
A meeting at Lok Kalyan Marg on Tuesday
At 7, Lok Kalyan Marg or the Prime Minister’s residence, India’s top military brass along with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh and Navy chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi met Prime minister Narendra Modi to further discuss India’s response to capture the perpetrators of violence.
Sources reported that, in the meeting, the Prime Minister gave India’s armed forces “complete operational freedom to decide on the mode, targets and timing of our response”. He expressed “complete faith and confidence in the professional abilities of the armed forces”, and added, “it is our national resolve to deal a crushing blow to terrorism”.
A second meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the second of its kind since the attack has also been called on Wednesday (April 30). The CCS comprises of the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Defence Minister (Rajnath Singh), Home Minister (Amit Shah), Finance Minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and the External Affairs Minister (S Jaishankar).
Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan also chaired a meeting today with the heads of the three paramilitary officers and senior officers of two other security organisations. Director General (DG) of Border Security Force Daljit Singh Chaudhary, DG of National Security Guard Brighu Srinivasan and DG of the Assam Rifles Lt Gen Vikas Lakhera were present at the meeting. So was Additional Director General of the Sashastra Seema Bal Anupama Nilekar Chandra.
A war against terrorism
Modi has earlier promised retribution for the attack and proposed that “India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers” by pursuing them “to the ends of the earth”. An all-party meeting was also held earlier this cut to cut across divisions and express unilateral support for the government’s decisions.
In the last Cabinet meeting, the government claimed to have discovered credible links with Pakistan for this attack and rolled out a series of measures like suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and all Pakistan visas by asking Pakistani national to leave the country by a deadline. In response, Pakistan also took a series of diplomatic steps in return and tensions between the two nations have been on a high ever since.
