India third country to avenge martyrdom: Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: In an indication of a significant shift in dealing with terror attacks after Pulwama, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah has said India is only the third country, after the US and Israel, to have avenged “martyrdom” of its soldiers.

“Until now, there were only two countries which took revenge for the martyrdom of their soldiers — the US and Israel. Because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is now the third country to do so,” Shah told ET in an . (Read full text here)

Asked if this was now a new policy, Shah said: “All I can say is we will fully utilise our right to self-defence. No one can just do what they want on our borders.”


As many as 40 CRPF personnel were killed on February 14 when their convoy was attacked by a Jaish-e-Mohammad suicide bomber, who rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into one of the buses. Days later, Indian Air Force fighter jets bombed Jaish-e-Mohammad’s biggest training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot.

The BJP president said the 2019 election will be fought on the kind of leadership that will helm the country. “The people will have to decide what kind of government they want — one which responds to terror attacks by crushing the terrorists or one which talks to them.”

Shah claimed the BJP will come back to power with a stronger majority, winning at least 50 of the seats it had lost in 2014.

DEMO & GST ARE A PLUS: SHAH
“National elections have to be fought on who can ensure better national security, who can give us a sound economic system… ensure financial discipline… And this work can only be done by Narendra Modi,” he said.

One of BJP’s main campaign promises, Shah said, is to ensure that India becomes the world’s third-largest economy. “Our aim is to bring the economy into top five and make efforts in the direction of taking it to the top three in the next five years.”

India is currently the world’s sixth-largest economy and is scheduled to occupy the No. 5 slot sometime this year.

Shah said the unemployment data was skewed and did not reflect the pace of development in the past five years. “The problem is not a crisis of jobs, but a crisis of data… When you are the fastest-growing economy in the world, when you more than double the pace of making roads and railways, build 8 crore toilets, 2.5 crore homes, construct 2 lakh railway lines, lay a digital fibre network to connect 1 lakh villages, then how can there be no jobs?”

As for demonetisation and the rollout of goods and services tax (GST), the BJP president said the positive impact of the two moves was now beginning to be felt in terms of better financial discipline and a robust sales tax regime.

“When we talk about ushering in financial discipline in the country, then demonetisation and GST are major factors… there were teething problems (with GST). We have tried to address these concerns. The 28% slab is now more or less out. Businesses with up to Rs 40 lakh turnover are exempt. I think the time has come to now reap the benefits from GST,” he said.