POTA repeal: Shourie picks on UPA over national security

Initiating the discussion, Shourie lamented that an item such as internal security of the country comes as a ‘‘filler’’.

Calling the issue ‘‘too great’’ to be treated in a partisan manner, he said, the situation has ‘‘deteriorated (in the last six months) to a great extent, compounded by events to a large extent’’.

Blaming it both on systemic flaws and the UPA’s ‘‘attitude’’, Shourie painted a rather bleak picture of the internal security situation.

He said while 64,000 people were killed in terrorist activities in the past 20 years, all inflicted on Indian soil, he pointed out that only 29 have been convicted as terrorists.

‘‘Forty-five per cent of the geographical area of India, which is not a small country but a subcontinent, is under the grip of insurgency of one kind or another,’’ he said.

Criticising Andhra Pradesh government’s unilateral move to get the Naxalites on board for talks without taking the other affected states into confidence, Shourie called ‘‘Left extremism’’ as the ‘‘most lethal’’ of insurgent activities.

In a note of warning, he said, as a ‘‘society we are getting used to worse and worse standards’’. Also criticising the PM’s statement in J-K, he wanted to know whether the parliamentary resolution on the issue was being rescinded.

Advising the Congress-led coalition not to compete with the previous government’s record and run after a ‘‘miracle’’ solution, he debunked the Track-II line with Pakistan.