Balakot strikes displayed our defence capability: Rajnath

New Delhi, February 28

India’s surgical strikes and Balakot bombings sent a strong message to Pakistan that terror infrastructure across the border couldn’t be used as safe haven to wage a low-cost war against India, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday.

Addressing a seminar, he said India’s adversary on the western border would have to think 100 times before considering about any future misadventure. The “out-of-the-box” response in the form of Balakot airstrikes forced rewriting of many doctrines by the adversary, Singh said without naming Pakistan.

A fleet of Indian Air Force aircraft bombed a terrorist training camp in Balakot inside Pakistan on February 26 last year to avenge the killing of 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in the Pulwama terror attack on February 14. On September 29, 2016, the Army carried out surgical strikes on a number of terror launch pads across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir in retaliation to an attack on its base in Uri that month.

“Our approach to terrorism was and will remain a judicious combination of clinical military action and mature and responsible diplomatic outreach,” Singh said, assuring the nation that the government would respond appropriately to any threat to India’s national security. He said the government had initiated major structural changes to tackle any future threats and it would take some time for the entire set-up to be fully operational. The defence minister said India’s response following Pulwama attack displayed the country’s defence capability and affirmed its right to defend itself against terrorism.

At the seminar titled ‘Air Power in No War, No Peace Scenario’, Singh paid tributes to 40 CRPF personnel killed in the Pulwama attack and saluted the soldiers who carried out the Balakot operation. Singh called hybrid warfare a reality, saying that a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic tools is a genuine threat. He emphasised the need to reorient the training of soldiers to meet the challenges posed by hybrid warfare. — PTI

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