New Delhi: In an interview that could cause political earthquakes in the Modi government, the Bharatiya Janata Party and in Jammu and Kashmir, Satya Pal Malik, the last governor of J&K before it was divided and reduced to Union territory status, says “Mein safely keh sakta hoon Prime Minister ko corruption se bahut nafrat nahin hain” (‘I can safely say the PM has no real problem with corruption’).
Malik, who was governor during the Pulwama terrorist attack of February 2019 and the scrapping of Article 370 in August that year, also says the prime minister is “ill-informed” and “ignorant” about Kashmir and told him not to speak about the Union home ministry’s lapses which led to the devastating terrorist attack on soldiers in Pulwama in February 2019.
In a wide-ranging interview, Malik revealed that the attack on the Central Reserve Police Force convoy in Pulwama was a result of “incompetence” and “laparvahi” by the Indian system and specifically the CRPF and the home ministry. At the time, Rajnath Singh was home minister.
Malik gave extensive details of how the CRPF had asked for aircraft to transport its jawans but was refused by the Union home ministry. He also spoke of how sanitisation of the route was not done effectively.
More importantly, he said all of these lapses were raised by him directly when Modi called him from outside Corbett Park shortly after the Pulwama attack. He said the prime minister told him to keep quiet about this and not tell anyone. Separately, Malik said that NSA Ajit Doval also told him to keep quiet and not talk about it. Malik said he immediately realised that the intention was to put the blame on Pakistan and derive electoral benefit for the government and the BJP.
Malik also said that there was grave intelligence failure in the Pulwama incident because the car carrying 300 kilograms of RDX explosives had come from Pakistan but was travelling around the roads and villages
More Stories
455 Government Lakes encroached in Uttara Kannada District
Legendary Kannada actress Leelavathi passes away at 85; cremated in her Soladevanahalli farm
26,983 cases settled in Fourth Lok Adalat held in Karwar amounting to Rs.30.83 Cr.