Hon. Chairman, Sir,
It is good that we are discussing the attack on Pathankot airbase almost
two and a half months after the incident happened. Though it is in the past, it
is important to learn lessons from the attack on the Pathankot airbase and what
it speaks of our defence preparedness and of our foreign policy objectives.
What are the lessons we have learnt from Pathankot attack? What were the lapses
that were discovered? To state briefly, the Pathankot airbase was attacked on
the early morning of 2nd January, 2016 ,
seven days after our Prime Minister paid an impromptu visit to Shri Nawaz
Sharif in Lahore . I do not know if
we were lulled into conspiracy. But by 1st January, Intelligence inputs have
reached Delhi after Shri Salwinder Singh, SSP, in that area was kidnapped and
he informed the140 police who informed the top brass that
fidayeen have entered the Indian side from across the porous border.160
The National Security Advisor, Shri Ajit Doval, took a meeting on 1st
January in Delhi and he called the National Security Guard commandos to
proceed to the spot. On 2nd January, the operations ensued. While the
operations were continuing, the Home Minister tweeted to say that the operation
is over. The next day it was discovered that two more fidayeen were still alive
and the Home Minister had to quickly retract his statement. We lost seven
personnel, including one NSG Lt. Colonel, Shri Niranjan Kumar, five from
defence security corps, and one Air Force Garud Commando.
The question that I
want to pose to both the hon. Defence Minister and the Home Minister who are
present here is, as to how even280 after the Dinanagar,
Gurdaspur attack on 27th July we did not take sufficient steps to
protect the border. This is addressed to the Home Minister as the BSF is under
his charge. Then, the question remains as to how320 they
were able to infiltrate into the Air Force base. Was there enough
security around the base, around the perimeter? Were there enough lights? Why
were you not able to detect the entry of the fidayeen? Apparently, the NSA took
the decision to send in the National Security Guards, who sometimes serve as personal
security of people, but are experts at hostage situations,
recovering people in a captive area and not to secure a huge area like
Pathankot airbase. There were, within 100 kms., RV Parachute Regiment Para 4,
one Para SF in Nahan, and 300 kms. away, in Udhampur, Army420
Parachute Regiment 4 and nine Para SF Units. Why were they not used? Why were
the operations done under the NSG Director-General who is a police officer? Why
were no combined operations headquarters set up?
These are questions
which the Ministers must answer if we have to see that there is no recurrence
of such fidayeen attacks in future.480 We have seen
terrorists’ actions in India
before. We know the famous case of the 1999 hijacking of the IC814 Indian
Airlines plane which resulted in release of dreaded terrorist Masood
Azhar, who is now the mastermind of this Pathankot attack. He is still leading
Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was lying low for some time; put in the doghouse by the
ISI, has again resurfaced with this attack. We are not able to tackle
it. The Government ultimately failed to do the perception560
battle as it did not communicate the correct and essential information about
the whole matter. This brings us to the question which Mr. Scindia dealt at
length. Before I go to that, I must mention this. Shri Nishikant Dubey spoke at
length about the right of the States, etc. Here, in Bhim Nagar, when the
fidayeen attacked civilian targets, it was the duty of the police to act. When
an Air Force base is directly attacked, you need not even alert640
the State Government. The Defence forces should take control of the situation.
Why did it not happen?
The logic given by
Shri Dubey is just totally fallacious. The question that Shri Scindia raised
very eloquently is this. What is our Pakistan
policy? Does it consist of flip-flops? We cancelled Secretary level talks when
Pakistani people met the Hurriyat leaders700 of Kashmir .
Then, our NSAs met in Bangkok .
Then, our External Affairs Ministers met. Then, our Prime Minister made
an unscheduled visit. As a
result, the Foreign Secretary level talks were cancelled between Shri
Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart. Now, I see that tomorrow, again, the
External Affairs Minister is going to meet Mr. Sartaj Aziz on the sidelines of
the SAA RC Foreign Ministers’ Conference and
will be handed over a letter from the Pakistani Prime Minister inviting our PM
to the SAA RC Summit. This is one flip-flop.
On the one hand, it is weakening the Indian resolve. The lack of defence800
preparedness in which six fidayeen were able to penetrate an Air Force base and
kill seven of our personnel shows the weak underbelly. The main question
remains as to what was their target. Their targets were two.840
They wanted to kill 25 Afghan airmen who were under training at Pathankot.
Secondly, they wanted to destroy our asset. That is, to attack helicopters and
MiG 21 planes. Good luck that didn’t happen. To whomsoever the credit may go,
should go. But the fact that they inflicted so much damage shows that we have
much to answer for. The Defence Minister, the Home Minister, the External
Affairs Minister and the Prime Minister should take note and take lessons from
the Pathankot attack. It has shown the chinks in our armoury. In the interest
of the country the chinks must be repaired. It should not be taken as a
partisan issue. It is an issue of the integrity and security of the
nation.960
Sir, January, 2016
witnessed infiltration of terrorists into our Pathankot Air Base. First of all,
I salute980 all the soldiers who are fighting for the
country. I also salute the parents of the soldiers who have sacrificed their
lives. I do not want to explain the chronological events of happenings
because everybody has the knowledge about them. Instead, I want to point out
certain gaps which need to be plugged immediately. Hon. Defence Minister
also admitted that same gaps led to the terror attack on the Air Force Base.
The Pathankot Air Force Station of Punjab is about 40 kilometres away from the
Indo-Pak border. It is an important area where many defence establishments
are based. An entire army division is headquartered there. As a part of the Western
Air Command, PAFS has a 25 kilometres perimeter, 12-feet high wall around
it topped by barbed wire. The base houses 75 fighter jets, attack helicopters,
Pechora surface-to-air missiles, drones,
surveillance radars,1120 ammunition and fuel dumps. About
1500 families live in the campus with a school, market and hospital.
Any damage to the
radar hub or air defence centre at the base could destroy the entire defence
network of the Western Sector. We are fortunate enough that Pakistan
trained terrorists tried but just about failed to destroy the network. The
strategic PAFS had been targeting from the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971. Intelligence
Bureau and the Punjab State Intelligence had sent out a warning five
days ahead of the terrorist attack that there was a huge threat to
installations on the border with Pakistan .
Despite the high alerts, the terrorists managed to engage the security
establishment comprising the Air Force, Army and NSG for around 48 hours.
We probably failed to deploy security arrangements at every possible
area in the Pathankot1260 airbase to avoid the attack. Before
the SP was stopped, the terrorists had already managed to sneak across the international1280
boundary and killed the driver of an Innova car. Jaish-e-Mohammad was
supposedly behind the strike. The terrorists made a cardinal mistake of using
the SP’s phone to make calls to Pakistan .
There was a confusion aired over the number of terrorists involved in the
attack. Lack of coordination reflected between our command and control. There
was no clarity over who was in-charge of the Operation. There was a lot of
confusion on the spot about who the Commanding Officer was. The
Army has the Special Forces trained and equipped to deal with counter
insurgency situations near Pathankot, Punjab ; at Nahan
in Himachal Pradesh and Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir .
The Army’s suggestions were ignored. We are unable to learn lessons1400
despite repeated attacks including the 2008 Mumbai strike. It is evident that
the Pathankot attackers crossed the border from the same place as those who
were responsible for the last year’s attack in Gurdaspur. The terrorists aimed
to destroy the1440 strategic assets at the ‘technical area’
and they came near doing it. They were foiled by the Indian Army and the NSG
detachments. The fact that they had come this far was perhaps due to
unpreparedness of the Indian Defence. The terrorists should never have been
allowed to climb over the perimeter wall. This failure led to all the
subsequent security problems of the Indian Defence. It was found that three of
the floodlights in the stretch of an 12-foot high wall that was breached, and
they had been turned upward and directed away from the wall, which drowned the1540
entire area in darkness. How could the extremists breach the high walls of the
highly protected base when concrete intelligence was available hours in
advance? The terrorists managed to penetrate deep into the strategic airbase at
Pathankot. Further advance could have led to a major disaster.1590
