Giriraj Singh (ANI image)
NEW DELHI: The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday hit out at Congress leader and former home minister P Chidambaram over his “homegrown terrorists” remarks, accusing him of speaking in favour of extremists.Union minister Giriraj Singh said that Chidambaram’s comments amounted to “supporting terrorists”. “He is supporting terrorists. Chhi, chhi (disgusting),” Singh said while reacting to the Congress leader’s statement. He also accused Chidambaram of “crossing all limits” and recalled that the former minister had once “brought terrorist Yasin Malik to sit with” then prime minister Manmohan Singh.”You have crossed all the limits. You even took away (then Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh’s dharma. (You) brought terrorist Yasin Malik to sit with him,” he added. Singh further alleged that India continues to suffer from terrorism due to what he called the Congress’s “appeasement politics”. “You (Chidambaram) should remember that from Nehru to Manmohan Singh, it’s your contribution. It’s the result of appeasement,” he said.Reacting to former home minister’s statement, BJP MP Praveen Khandelwal said: “A terrorist has no religion or nationality. Why does P Chidambaram forget the time when he was the Union Home Minister? He did not raise these issues at the time? During his tenure, many such attacks happened. He wants to mislead people by giving such statements.” BJP national spokesperson Nalin Kohli also criticised Chidambaram, accusing him of trying to “build a political narrative” over the Delhi bomb blast that killed 13 people and injured over 25. “Such statements and attempts to paint victimhood on terrorists do injustice to those who have suffered terror,” Kohli said. He added: “There are only two sides in the fight against terrorism — those who are with terrorism and those against terrorism.”Chidambaram’s remarks came a day earlier, when he wrote on X that the government had maintained a “discreet silence” despite knowing that “homegrown terrorists” exist. His post read: “I have maintained before and after the Pahalgam terror attack that there are two kinds of terrorists — foreign-trained infiltrated terrorists and home-grown terrorists. I said so in Parliament during the debate on Operation Sindoor. I was mocked and trolled for the reference to home-grown terrorists. However, I must say that the government observed a discreet silence because the government knows that there are home-grown terrorists too. The point of this tweet is we should ask ourselves what are the circumstances that turn Indian citizens — even educated persons — into terrorists.”Referring to the recent Delhi blast and arrests of educated professionals allegedly linked to the plot, he said the real question was why Indian citizens, “even educated persons” are turning into terrorists.The Congress leader’s comments echoed his earlier warning during the Parliament debate on Operation Sindoor, launched after the Pahalgam terror attack. Then too, he had urged the government to examine the possibility of homegrown terrorism instead of solely blaming Pakistan. This had also drawn a sharp backlash from the BJP. The Delhi blast, which killed over a dozen people near Red Fort on Monday has already led to several arrests, including doctors linked to a Faridabad-based module allegedly tied to Jaish-e-Mohammed.
