india

Updated: Mar 01, 2019 10:55 IST

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has said there should not be a war between India and Pakistan for the sake of politics and elections as she demanded that the Centre must share details about the IAF’s air strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammad terror camp.

The Trinamool Congress leader also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not holding a single meeting with the opposition leaders after the Pulwama terror attack or the Indian Air Force’s strike on Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Pakistan’s Balakot.

“We don’t want political ends to be pursued. If it’s for the country, we are with the country, but if it’s for politics, and for winning elections, then we don’t want that,” Mamata Banerjee said at the state secretariat on Thursday evening.

The chief minister said nobody knows about the facts of the IAF’s airstrike on the Jaish camp and that the television news channels were “unilaterally fed information”.

“We have the right to know how many people were killed in the air strikes launched by India. Is it 300, or 350? I read in the international media that the bombs landed somewhere else. How many actually perished? Or, did anyone at all,” she said.

“Till today the Prime Minister did not hold a single meeting with the opposition leaders be it after the Pulwama incident or the air strikes,” she remarked.

The country has a right to know, she remarked.

“What happened in the past five years? Pathankot (terror strike on the airbase in 2016) happened, but there was no action,” she said.

Mamata Banerjee had on February 25 lashed out at the Centre, alleging it failed to act on the intelligence input indicating a terror attack in Kashmir. She also questioned why were the CRPF personnel not airlifted and the corridor not properly sanitised.

At least 40 Central Reserve Police Force soldiers were killed when a Jaish operative rammed his car laden with explosives into the CRPF convoy in Pulwama on February 14.

During her party’s core committee meeting, she had also wondered whether the attack was a ploy to do politics over the CRPF soldiers.

“We don’t like war hysteria to be whipped up over the blood of jawans,” the Bengal chief minister said on Thursday echoing her earlier comments.

“Along with his family members and all our countrymen, we are anxiously waiting for the safe return of our pilot #Abhinandhan,” she wrote on Twitter in the afternoon.

IAF’s pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman will be released by Pakistan on Friday, two days after he was captured by the neighbouring country after he shot down their F 16 jet.