Erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir prince wants India to respond within 48 hrs

Rajya Sabha MP and erstwhile prince of Jammu and Kashmir Dr Karan Singh expressed a sense of urgency in the wake of Sunday's Uri attack and stated that India must respond in the next 48 hours.

In sharp criticism of the government, Dr Singh said that the establishment here, "had been caught napping" twice in the past nine months, citing the Pathankot attack as one of the two instances of laxity. "We have become complacent undoubtedly. The Uri incident is a fallout of carelessness that stemmed from our inability to learn any lessons from Pathankot," the former governor of J&K stated. In a departure from his August statement in which he emphasised upon the need of a dialogue and resolution of Kashmir matter, he demanded retaliation by India. "We must retaliate in the next 48 hours. It is about time we took a stand and gave Pakistan a befitting reply," the senior Congress leader endorsed call for payback by other leaders. In his Rajya Sabha speech on August 10, he had however, taken a different and more political stance, saying "India must not stop a dialogue with Pakistan and China."

While his party and others in the opposition like RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav have taken shots at the Modi government for leadership failure and lack of tactical understanding to address the Kashmir issue following the Uri attack, Dr Singh condemned the politics being played on national security. He claimed that all the mainstream parties were united when it came to national security, and took a jibe on Yadav and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, calling them "loose cannons". "Leaders like Yadav and Kejriwal must not indulge in dirty politics at least now. They must understand the sensitivity of the incident. My sympathies are with the families of the martyred soldiers,"Singh condoned Yadav's statement on Uri attack.