With the Congress on Sunday raking up a “Gujarat-origin” multi-crore heroin seizure by the Australian Coalition Maritime Forces, off the coast of Kenya in April, to question Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s track record on security, the Bharatiya Janata Party hit back by pointing out that maritime security was essentially a Central subject.
The penultimate day of the nine-phase elections saw the two parties trade charges on national security. Firing the first salvo for the Congress, Abhishek Singhvi said Gujarat — which has one of the longest coastlines in India, and the districts of Kutch and Jamnagar sharing their borders with Pakistan — has been totally lax on the issue of coastal security.
CAG report
He cited a 2009 report of the Comptroller & Auditor General that charged the Gujarat government with “ignoring coastal security despite funds provided by the Central government for Global Positioning System, Automatic Vehicle Locator System.”
Detailing the heroin seizure, he said it was worth Rs.1,600 crore and the dhow Laxmi Narain was chartered to Jamnagar-based Haza Bhai Kathiriya, whose two brothers are active in the BJP. One of them, Haji Abdul Karim Kungda, is the elected member of the Salaya municipality in Gujarat.
Taking a dig at the Congress for not mending its ways even in the face of imminent defeat, BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi described the Congress charge as yet another diversionary tactic. Indicating a Pakistani link to the heroin seizure and citing a media report of a Pakistani national being among the dozen people arrested in the case, she said: “The Congress is protecting Pakistan while denigrating the State of Gujarat. This is sinister politics.”
Stating that coastal security and internal security were ignored by the UPA government, she pointed out that smuggling essentially had to be dealt with by Central agencies, and the role of the State governments was minimal. Also, according to her, the Centre had neither responded to a November 2013 request from Gujarat to set up a maritime immigration checkpost nor made any effort to beef up security at the 43 major and non-major ports in the State.
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