Indian defence minister was not told about Balakot attack

Islamabad : Indian Rajia Sabha member belonging to BJP and known anti-Pakistan, anti-Muslim member Parliament Subramanian Swamy has revealed that Indian defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman was not informed about the Indian Air Force (IAF) airstrikes on Balakot.

In a tweet, he claimed that he learnt that operation against camps in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir was conceptualised by just seven persons: Prime Minister Modi, NSA Ajit Doval, three services chief and IB & RAW. There has been no official denial. In a write-up by Vappala Balachandran, former Indian special secretary of cabinet secretariat appeared in Indian media has stated that almost all foreign media outlets had picked up Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor’s tweet and photos at 5:42am (Indian time) on February 26, which claimed that IAF jets had violated the Line of Control (LoC), and when confronted by Pakistan Air Force (PAF) planes, “released a payload (munitions) while escaping.” Some reports also said, quoting local villagers, that no damage was done. Subsequently, this subject attracted bitter polemics between the BJP and opposition parties, which complained that the BJP leadership was using the Pulwama incident and the airstrike to campaign for the 2019 elections. They also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ready to reveal the details of this operation during his public meetings but not to the opposition in parliament.

“The starting point of these events was the foreign secretary’s statement that our intelligence-led operation” on February 26 had “eliminated” a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis. Subsequent public debates resembled reprehensible politics, with even responsible ministers descending to street squabbling level.

He has written that on March 6, junior external affairs minister and former army Chief VK Singh deemed critics and journalists “jonk” (leeches). The BJP spokespersons regularly shout down dissenting opinions of senior journalists or foreign experts on TV debates. The purpose of this article, however, is not to further explore what happened in Balakot. However, in this process, what is forgotten is the decision-making system over such situations, as revealed by Subramanian Swamy--a cause for serious concern. The write-up says that a sure way of killing traditional democratic institutions is by conferring disproportionate powers to a chosen individual over other departments.

This practice becomes even more objectionable when that individual’s position has no sanction of law. In this process, statutory departments are bypassed by non-statutory authorities on policy decisions and implementation. This has been done to the present national security adviser’s role in the government. It is unimaginable that any democracy would have kept their defence minister, who is answerable to parliament, out of the decision-making process of her own department, while the rein for operations is held by an official much lower in rank. The exemplar of all National Security Council (NSC) systems in the world is the US body which was created through a law in 1947 by the US Congress; this was to give institutionalised support to the president in designing national security strategy. It was also to check future repetition of the highly personalised management of security policy by President FDRoosevelt during the Second World War. Most other NSCs in other democracies are modeled on the US system. Several examples of other countries will show the risks of leaving all decision-making only to intelligence leaders based on secret information, without cross-checking with other stakeholders – including cabinet ministers who are answerable to the public through Parliament.