Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday took a swipe at neighbouring Pakistan saying that the Indian military would need just 12 days to defeat “them”.
“We know that our neighbouring country has lost three wars against us, our armed forces don't need more than 10-12 days to defeat them. They've been fighting proxy wars against India since decades. It claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, army personnel,” the prime minister said while speaking at an Indian armed forces’ youth wing National Cadet Corps rally in Delhi.
Stating Kashmir to be the jewel inIndia ’s crown, Modi said: “It was our duty to bring people of Kashmir out of the misery of several years."
“Several speeches were given but when our armed forces used to ask to take action, it was refused. Today there is young thinking; country is progressing with youthful thinking. So, it does surgical strike, airstrike and teaches lesson to terrorists after entering their houses,” he said, referring to the February 2019 Balakot airstrike that India carried out on a terrorist camp inside Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over Kashmir since they gained independence from British rule in 1947. They have fought three wars in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971. Two of the three wars were fought over Kashmir.
After the first war over Jammu and Kashmir, both the countries agreed to a ceasefire along a line between India and Pakistan’s controlled parts of Jammu and Kashmir; that line was then officially recognised as the Line of Control in the 1972 Shimla Agreement, which was signed by former India Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and former Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Since August 2019, the number of ceasefire violations along the Line of Control between the two countries have reportedly increased markedly.