Terrorist elimination on rise under NDA rule: Parrikar

Hyderabad, Oct 15: Cross-border infiltration has come down while the rate of "elimination" of terrorists has gone up since the NDA government came to power last year, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today said.

"You see the data of last 10 years... After the (NDA) government came to power (last year), the border infiltration has decreased and terrorist elimination rate has gone up," he told reporters after attending an event that marked the renaming of the missile complex here as Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Missile Complex.

To a query that cross-border infiltration was on the rise despite government's repeated warnings to the neighbouring country, Parrikar said, "We will neutralise them; whoever tries to infiltrate into the country.

If any terrorist attempts to infiltrate through the border it is our duty to neutralise them... that is our duty... we will do that... we have got a lot of success." Reacting to another query on holding of Aero India show in Bengaluru, he said, "the air show will continue in Bengaluru."

On reports that some leading RTI activists would boycott the opening of annual CIC convention, celebrating 10th anniversary of the transparency law, to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "This is a democracy."

When asked about the proposal to assign combat roles to women in Air Force, followed by the Navy and Army, the Minister said, "I have said there will be role for women in all (Army, Navy and Air Force), except where there is a problem of infrastructure or training... these are some bottleneck points."

In the next two to three months, a policy decision would be taken on this, he added. At the event earlier, Parrikar said, "We have decided that in next five years we shall be totally 100 per cent self- sufficient in missile technology." The prestigious Missile Complex here, which houses research units of DRDO, was renamed after Kalam on the occasion of his 84th birth anniversary.

PTI