Kumaraswamy accuses PM of not sharing details of Balakot air strikes

Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not sharing complete details of Balakot air strikes. The remarks come a day after Modi's attack on him during the PM's Belagavi and Chikkodi election meetings on Thursday.

Modi took on Kumaraswamy for saying the matter of air strikes on terror camps in Pakistan's Balakot should not be overpublicised "fearing the vote bank bank would get angry.""Now tell me, Where is Congress and the JD(S) vote bank? Is it in Bagalkot or Balakot? This Congress-JD(S) has to decide," the prime minister said.

Talking to reporters in Hubballi, Kumaraswamy said, "We do not know anything about the air strike. We read only in the newspapers. You (Modi) did not give the complete information to the people of India about the air strikes. He (Modi) publicises it as if he himself carried out the air strike and nobody had ever crossed the Pakistan border in the past," the chief minister said.

He said the prime minister had been projecting that Pakistan was trembling with fear. The JD(S) leader added that he found Indira Gandhi a bigger leader than Modi.

"Did Narendra Modi form Bangladesh? It is Indira Gandhi's gift. What have you (Modi) done?" Kumaraswamy said. On Modi's jibe that the Congress and JD(S) projected the attack inside Balakot in Pakistan as if it was something in Bagalkot in Karnataka as the two parties thought India could not dare to do so.

The chief minister said, "We have not seen Balakot. You (Modi) must have seen it. You only went there with a shawl to celebrate an event with the (then) prime minister (Nawaz Sharif). What discussions you had there? What harmony you could establish with the Pakistan prime minister whom you gave the shawl?" 

Referring to Modi ridiculing his purported remark that people who were unable to get two square meals a day go to the defence services, the JD(S) leader said, "I did say that since Modi does not have the ability to give jobs to the youth, people go to the Army to sustain their families and survive somehow.

"I spoke about the poverty of the families. I told him not to play with the lives of such youths. But they twisted my words and they twisted my statement. BJP is expert in that," he added.

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