While Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be remembered as a great politician, Prime Minister, and statesman, the one blemish he will always have during his tenure as PM is the handling of the Kandahar hijack in 1999.
While Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be remembered as a great politician, Prime Minister, and statesman, the one blemish he will always have during his tenure as PM is the handling of the Kandahar hijack in 1999.
The December 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 by 5 terrorists was flown to Afghanistan who demanded the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and few other terrorists. External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had to go with the terrorists to Afghanistan to safely free the passengers.
At that time, most of Afghanistan, including Kandahar where the plane landed, was under Taliban control. And this particular operation was in collaboration with Pakistan's ISI.
Former RAW Chief A S Dulat in an interview had said that former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah shouted at him for "hours together" during their meeting after a decision was taken to release three hardcore militants in exchange for the freedom of the passengers of the hijacked plane.
Since then, the BJP has stood by its stance to release the terrorists. In 2008, Rajnath Singh refused to accept that the 1999 Kandahar episode was a "weakpoint" for the party and it has been pushed on the "backfoot" as Congress is raising questions over the NDA government's approach to terrorism.
"We had to save the lives of so many people (held hostage on the hijacked plane)... It does not mean we compromised with terrorism," he said in an interview amid sustained attack by Congress over NDA government's decision to release three terrorists to end the hijacking crisis.
Vajpayee passed away on Thursday at the age of 93. He was admitted at the premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on June 11 with a kidney tract infection, urinary tract infection, low urine output and chest congestion.
With Inputs from DNA Research and Archives
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 "(Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee)")
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