Himachal Pradesh Congress on Tuesday accused the BJP of shedding crocodile tears on Kargil war for the party was mired in coffin scam at that time.
Talking to media, state Congress senior spokesperson Deepak Sharma said BJP was pretending to be the well wisher of soldiers but the fact was that the party had used armed forces for political mileage in the elections.
“BJP has always indulged in vote bank politics and has used Kargil war, Pulwama terror attack and surgical strikes to gain electoral mileage.
During the Congress regime, two wars were fought by the Indian Army in 1962 and 1971 and had emerged victorious. In the past too, surgical strikes were conducted by the Indian Army but the party never made these victories an election issue,” he added.
Sharma stated that BJP had politicized the armed forces and had cheated soldiers in the name of ‘One Rank, One Pension’ scheme.
Besides, the BJP government had lathicharged peacefully protesting soldiers on 14 August 2015 and didn’t sanctioned funds to clinics under ECHS while the government increased the card’s price by Rs 50 from Rs 150 to 200, he said.
He further stated that the Centre government imposed income tax on disability pension to ex-servicemen and also imposed a cut on items being made available to them through CSD canteens.
“These double standards show the real face of BJP and it is the habit of the party to play vote bank politics in the name of caste, religion and pseudo nationalism,” he added.
Sharma accused the ruling party of diverting the attention of the general public from the core issues of price rise and unemployment and said the party had adopted a negative approach towards issues concerning the common man.