Under attack from Congress on the Kandahar hijacking episode, BJP is not apologetic about the then NDA Government's decision to free three terrorists.
NEW DELHI: Under attack from Congress on the Kandahar hijacking episode, BJP is not apologetic about the then NDA Government's decision to free three terrorists and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh accompanying them to Afghanistan, saying it was a "necessity" at that time.
BJP President 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.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Saturday accused the saffron party of "surrendering to terrorists" in 1999.
Five terrorists hijacked IC-814 plane during flight from Kathmandu to Delhi on December 24. At least 154 passengers and crew were held hostage for eight days and the stand-off ended when three dreaded terrorists were released and Jaswant Singh took them on a special plane to Kandahar.
Asked whether BJP did not find anything wrong in a minister accompanying terrorists, Rajnath Singh said "considering the sentiments of the nation and people of the country, it was a necessity of that time."
Referring to the scenes outside 7, Race Course Road during the hijacking crisis, the BJP chief said "everybody was demanding that nobody should be killed. Even Congress was demonstrating outside the Prime Minister's residence."
Seeking to justify the Vajpayee government's action, he said "It was an hour of crisis. If the Congress is saying it was the weak point of the BJP or it was a failure of NDA's strategy, then I would like to ask them why they were demonstrating outside the PM's residence."
His comments came amid continuing war of words between the Congress and the BJP on who tackled terrorism better.
The BJP is accusing the UPA government of being soft on terror, citing as a case the delay in hanging of Parliament attack convict Mohd Afzal.
Singh insisted that the previous NDA government never compromised on its fight against terrorism and took it up as a challenge.
"We took the crisis of terrorism as a challenge. We devised ways to deal with it and kept up the morale of the security forces," he maintained.
He said if NDA returns to power, it will enact a law tougher than POTA to fight terror with an iron fist.
"This Government crossed all limits when they repealed POTA without providing an alternative," he said, adding that scrapping of the tough anti-terror law was a message by the Congress-led government that it is "soft" on terror.
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