Congress leader and former home minister P Chidambaram's argument that "homegrown terrorists" could be involved in the Pahalgam terror attack — and that "no evidence” has been given so far that the killers came from Pakistan — invited a sharp response from the ruling BJP.
Chidambaram, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, later retorted saying he was being trolled by spreading misinformation and selective parts of his interview.
The controversy broke just hours before Parliament was to take up a debate on Operation Sindoor, India's response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
“Once again, the Congress rushes to give a clean chit to Pakistan,” BJP's IT cell head Amit Malviya posted on X late Sunday night, with a clip from Chidambaram's interview to The Quint.
Chidambaram responded about 10 hours later as the din around his comments grew on Monday morning: “Trolls are of different kinds and use different tools to spread misinformation.”
He added, “The worst kind is a troll who suppresses the full recorded interview, takes two sentences, mutes some words, and paints the speaker in a black colour!”
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{{/usCountry}}In the interview, Chidambaram spoke about how PM Narendra Modi's government had handled the investigation into the terror attack. He said there was a need to present evidence to foreign countries so that Pakistan could be held responsible at the international level.
“Why have you not apprehended [the terrorists]? Why have you not even identified them?” Chidambaram said.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has so far arrested two local men from Kashmir and said they disclosed the identities of the three armed men involved in the attack. The terrorists were Pak nationals affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the NIA has said, but refused to name them, saying details would be shared "at an appropriate time”.
Chidambaram's son Karti also posted on X, asking “all those who are trigger happy & jumpy” to watch the full interview. He shared a clip from the interview, in which his father questioned the “complete silence” on the attackers' identity, and why information was being shared “in bits and pieces by different offices”.
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“When it comes to national security, there should be no ambiguity,” BJP's Malviya said in his X post, “But with the Congress, there never is – they always bend over backwards to protect the enemy.”
Parliament, meanwhile, is set to debate India's response to the Pahalgam attack — Operation Sindoor and the diplomacy around it — with the Lok Sabha taking it up on Monday, and the Rajya Sabha the next day.