India’s national security ‘thoroughly compromised’

The government's silence over the leaked WhatsApp chats of TV anchor Arnab Goswami on the Balakot strikes is "deafening", Congress president Sonia Gandhi said yesterday, alleging that national security had been "thoroughly compromised". 

In her opening remarks at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), Sonia Gandhi also took on the government over the farmer protests, alleging "shocking insensitivity and arrogance" and what she called a charade of consultations between the centre and protesters.

"Very recently there have been very disturbing reports on how national security has been so thoroughly compromised. I think just a few days back, Antony-ji (former Defence Minister AK Antony) had said that leaking of official secrets of military operations is treason. Yet the silence from the Government's side on what has been revealed has been deafening," Sonia Gandhi said in her virtual address.

"Those who give certificates of patriotism and nationalism to others now stand totally exposed."

In its investigations into a TV ratings scam, Mumbai Police has submitted to a court WhatsApp transcripts of chats between Republic TV's Arnab Goswami and Partho Dasgupta, the former CEO of ratings agency BARC, which reveal the TV anchor as saying three days before the Balakot strike that "something big will happen", that it would be "bigger than a normal strike" and "the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated."

The conversation is dated February 23, 2019, three days before India sent Air Force fighter jets to Balakot in Pakistan to destroy a Jaish-e-Mohammad terror base in retaliation for the terror attack in Pulwama, in which over 40 soldiers were killed.

The CWC meeting also decided that a new Congress president will be elected in June after five state elections.