This time on surgical strikes: Digivijaya Singh and his controversial comments

New Delhi, Jan 23: The Congress has questioned many actions taken by the Indian Army and this time its leader, Digvijaya Singh says that there is no proof of the surgical strikes being carried out.

On Monday, he questioned the authenticity of the surgical strikes. They spoke about how many were killed in the surgical strikes, but there is no proof of it, he said at a public rally in Jammu and Kashmir.

The comments were made on a day when the nation is celebrating Parikram Diwas, the birth anniversary of freedom fighter, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

The BJP's Gaurav Bhatia hit out at Singh and said that it is the character of the Congress party to make irresponsible statements. The country will not tolerate anyone speaking against our security forces. Singh and Rahul Gandhi do not have patriotism left in them due to their hatred towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

Singh has been in the news for many such remarks in the past. In 2021, he found himself in a controversy over his comments on the Clubhouse platform during a conversation with a Pakistani journalist during which he said that his party would consider reversing the decision to abrogate Article 370 if it returned to office.

In April he courted controversy when he said that the BJP was hiring poor Muslim boys to throw stones at Hindu processions.

During the 2019 elections, when the BJP decided to field Sadhvi Pragya Singh against him from the Bhopal constituency, he had created the bogey of Hindu terror as a political strategy. He had labelled the rich Hindu civilisation as terrorists and had blamed Sadhvi for the Malegaon blasts.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, he launched a book which had accused the Hindus of executing the attack. He reportedly attempted to link death of Maharashtra ATS chief, Hemant Karkare during the attack to some alleged threats he had received from a Hindu outfit. He had said that two hours before the attack, Karkare told him that he was receiving death threats from Hindu extremist groups who are opposing the probe by the ATS. The book that was released was '2611: RSS ki Saazish is written by Aziz Burnet.

In 2018, he accused the RSS of promoting terrorism. All Hindu terrorists who have been caught so far have been linked to the RSS members in the past, he said in Jhabua.

Nathuram Godse who killed Mahatma Gandhi was also part of the RSS, he said. This ideology spreads hate and violence leads to terrorism, he had said. He however maintained that he only spoke about Sanghi terrorism and not Hindu terrorism.