India tackling terror with new policy and process: PM Narendra Modi

India is tackling terror attacks with new policy and process, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised on Thursday—the anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 that left 174 people dead—in an oblique reference to the 2016 surgical strike and the 2019 air strikes in Pakistan that demonstrated India’s hardened military stance to the world.

The Prime Minister called Pakistan the perpetrator of the Mumbai terror attack and emphasised that the attack will never be forgotten.

Addressing the conference of presiding officers virtually on Constitution Day, the Prime Minister said, “This date is also associated with the biggest terror attack in our country. In 2008, terrorists sent by Pakistan launched an attack on Mumbai that left many Indians and foreigners dead. I pay my tribute to all of them.”

“Today’s India is fighting terror attacks with new policies and processes,” said Modi.

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India’s hardened stand towards tackling terror has been a key feature of the Modi government’s security policy and the leadership of the current dispensation has often tried to play up the difference between the United Progressive Alliance era and the National Democratic Alliance regime’s approach towards terror.

In 2016, the Modi government sent forces across the border for a surgical strike on Pakistani soil after the terror attack on Uri. While the Congress and several military experts claimed that such strikes were conducted earlier as well, the surgical strike of September 2016 was different because the political leadership took ownership of the action and announced India’s muscular military response to the world. The operation was in retaliation against an attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri, Kashmir, the same month that claimed the lives of 19 soldiers. The suicide attackers had come from Pakistan.

Three years later, the decision to carry out air strikes was taken within 24 hours of the Pulwama attack, with the government giving the Indian Air Force two weeks to select terror targets and launch air strikes against them.

The new security policy of the government has also been a talking point for the BJP in the polls.

The Prime Minister also paid homage to the police personnel who died in the Mumbai terror attack and to all the security forces who have died fighting terrorists.