No 'message' on past cross-LoC strikes were conveyed by the army, clarifies S Jaishankar

On 18 October, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar issued a clarification on the question whether cross-Line of Control surgical strikes had been undertaken in the past by the army, saying that only the military would be privy to such information, as no message about such assaults had been conveyed in the past.

"What FS said is that the key issue is that we went public after conducting the surgical strikes which conveyed a politico-military message. Whether any previous crossings had been done only the army would know. But it is irrelevant anyway because there was no message," sources in the government said.

The clarification about what transpired at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs, which was briefed on the strikes by Jaishankar, came after some opposition MPs quoted him having said the army had carried out "target specific, limited-calibre, counter-terrorist operations" across the LoC in the past too but this was for the first time the government had gone public about it.

The army carried out surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC on the intervening night of 28 and 29 September.

--PTI