Mumbai blasts: Rahul Gandhi's gaffe puts Congress on defensive

With Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi asserting that it is “very difficult to prevent every terror attack”, the party has been forced to rally round in his defence.

Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi described Rahul’s observation as a “commonsensical fact” and added that terrorists have to succeed only once whereas the security apparatus has to succeed all the time.

Rahul had spoken at Bhubaneswar and his observation was an attempt to highlight that the government had been doing a job on the security front.  He claimed that after 26/11 terror attack, the government had achieved 99 percent success in handling terror.

“I don’t say it is impossible... it is very difficult to stop any single terrorist attack,” he said, adding that 99 percent of attacks had been stopped. “We must stop 100 percent attacks.”

But as opposition parties slammed him for being insensitive to the feelings of the victims, the Congress party rushed to his defence.