No heads rolled and no inquiry was held for Pulwama terror attack. Why?

A conversation between former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was uploaded on the latter’s YouTube channel on Wednesday, garnering nearly 5 lakh views in the first six hours. We bring you the highlights.

Here are some of the more interesting parts of the conversation:

SATYAPAL MALIK

• Your indifference to power and positions — mujhe kuchh nahin chahiye (I want nothing) — is your biggest strength

• The government should restore statehood to J&K and hold elections

• The Union government bifurcated and downgraded the state into two UTs because it feared that the state police would revolt. J&K Police, however, are so loyal that despite Eid, nobody clamoured for leave

• Union home ministry sat on CRPF’s request for five aircraft for four months before rejecting it. That is what forced the CRPF to move jawans in 87 buses in February 2019 and which led to the Pulwama terror attack.

• Heads should have rolled for the terror attack. Four-and-a-half years later, however, no inquiry has been conducted, no head has rolled, and no explanations given for intelligence failures and lapses in not sanitising the link roads in the highway

• The PM asked me specifically not to point out our failures in stopping the terror attack. National security advisor Ajit Doval, who was my college mate in Meerut, also asked me to keep quiet. They wanted to make political capital out of it

• Even in villages, people now speak of the meteoric rise of the Adani group and say that Adani’s money is actually owned by this man (isee ka hai)

• If this man is not stopped in 2024, they will hand over India’s agriculture to the corporate lobby. Farmers are getting poorer every year and the government has gone back on its assurances on MSP. It has betrayed the farmers

• People have lost faith in TV news and mainstream media. They also now understand this government’s spins and narratives. While the government has total control over print and electronic media, the Opposition’s strength is social media, but the government is trying to clamp down on it

RAHUL GANDHI

• Why do some politicians work so hard to grab offices of power and are willing to compromise almost everything?

• When I received information that bodies of the martyrs at Pulwama were being flown to Delhi, I reached the airport to pay my respects. There I was literally locked up in a room and told I would not be allowed to leave the room. Apparently, the PM was to arrive to lay wreaths

• I got the sense that arrangements were being made for a great show and I found it distasteful

• As you rightly pointed to the agriculture storage capacity being monopolised by the Adani Group, I have seen the effect in J&K and in Himachal Pradesh

• If they wanted to expand the Parliament, all they had to do was convert the Central Hall into the Lok Sabha and convert the Lok Sabha into the Rajya Sabha. They could have just arranged for a Central Hall in the annexe. There was no need for a new Parliament building