New Delhi: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Friday admitted that there are no "conclusive leads" in the Delhi High Court bomb blast case while criticising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for politicising terror strikes. Chidambaram ridiculed Arun Jaitley saying that the BJP leader had been out of power for too long to know how things work.
Rubbishing reports that he was heckled when he went to enquire about the Delhi blast victims in the hospitals, Chidambaram said, "I was at RML Hospital and I was not hackled. People and relatives of injured were asking for information on various things. Mr. Arun Jaitley has been out of office for long time. He does not know how people react in these situations."
He also called the BJP immature for blaming the Government for failing to prevent terror attacks.
"We are looking at every threat from all over the nation. I regret what Leaders of Opposition have said, especially when families are suffering and people are dead. It is deeply unfortunate that the BJP so quickly gave up bi-partisanship and statesmanship. Perhaps it is not in the DNA of the BJP to maintain bi-partisanship when India and neighbouring countries face the grave challenge of terrorism," he said.
Jaitley hit back at Chidambaram saying that instead of indulging in political blame game, the Home Minister should introspect on the recurring terror attacks and their unresolved status.
"Rather then making it a partisan issue Mr. Chidambaram should be seriously concerned with the fact that in cases after cases either there is no prior intelligence coming or the cases are going unresolved. I don't see any sense of anger and urgency in order to achieve this," said Jaitley, who is also the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
Earlier, Jaitley claimed that people were fed up with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government which had lost its credibility due to frequent terror attacks and corruption cases.
"I have not seen the Government lose its credibility in one single Session of Parliament. When the Session started, the Government had a lot of arrogance, but there was bitterness amongst the senior people in the Government by the time the Session ended," he said.
"National security has been a huge issue. Only saying we will have zero tolerance towards terrorism does not help. Eradicating terrorism completely is what we should aim for," Jaitley added.
Jaitley claimed that Congress leaders including Chidambaram were heckled at by the blast victims and their relatives at the RML Hospital.
Addressing a press conference on Friday afternoon Chidambaram also claimed that investigators were looking at all the three e-mails received in connection with Wednesday's blast carefully and trying to trace the people involved in sending them.
He admitted that the Pune Best Bakery blast in February 2010, Mumbai serial blasts in July 2011 and the Delhi High Court blast have been blots on his tenure as the Home Minister of India.
"The three terror attacks which have happened since I took over have been blots. But there have been blots on other government as well. No one can say for sure there will be no attack in future," he said.
Chidambaram said that police was not upto the mark in India and there were many causes behind it, one of them poor police-public ratio and the other being the long hours of work hat a security personnel put in.
"We are doing our best. We will do our best. I will give my utmost to ensure security is provided. We will reach the ideal people-police ratio. We are recruiting more police personnel and training them. We are getting the best equipments. People must also cooperate with security forces. I know there is slackness in police. The average policemen stands for 14 hours a day, gets no offs for three weeks," he said.
Claiming that the third e-mail which warned of an attack in Ahmedabad was probably not sent by a terrorist, Chidambaram said, "We have deciphered a code which has hinted that the next attack will be in Ahmedabad. But the code was too simple to break and so it cannot be said that it was sent by someone who was seriously attempting an attack."
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