New Delhi, 30 Sept

The BJP on Tuesday attacked the Congress over the remarks of former home minister P Chidambaram related to the 2008 Mumbai attack, claiming that the then UPA government bowed to pressure and it was a weak dispensation.

In a podcast, the Congress leader had suggested that he personally favoured military retribution against Pakistan following the ghastly terror attack but the government led by the then prime minister Manmohan Singh decided to go by the external affairs ministry's view to resort to diplomatic measures against the neighbouring country.

He noted that world powers, including the US, wanted India to not start a war with Pakistan.

Chidambaram was shifted from the finance ministry to the home ministry soon after the terror attack on 26 November.

BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said Chidambaram's comments have raised a big question as to how weak the government led by Singh was.

How much Singh bowed is clear from his statement, Prasad said, and asked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to respond as the country can see how it was governed when the UPA government was in power.

"We are proud of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That is why India is safe and developing economically too. And it does not bow before the world as well," Prasad said.

India under Modi has repeatedly avenged terror attacks linked to Pakistan by taking down terrorist sanctuaries inside the country, he said.

Terrorists have been killed inside Pakistan, he added.

In a swipe at Chidambaram, the former Union minister said the wisdom that India should have given a befitting reply to Pakistan has dawned on him after so many years but his view was not supported.

"Why had he hidden this information from the country for so long? It is shameful. The MEA (ministry of external affairs) overruled the MHA (ministry of home affairs) and Manmohan Singh could do nothing," he said, noting that the deadliest terror attack on Indian soil killed a large number of people.