Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said India arrived on the world stage and showed that it meant business after conducting “surgical strikes” against Pakistan in 2016, reported PTI. Speaking at an award function in Mumbai, Goyal said the government would mark the second anniversary of the strikes on September 29.
The Union minister said the country was now in good hands. “We are proud of the surgical strikes and we feel safe now in the hands of the leader who conducted them,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.
A surgical strike is a military attack aimed to harm only the intended target and ensure minimal collateral damage to general public infrastructure and utilities around it.
On September 29, 2016, Indian Army’s then Director General of Military Operations Ranbir Singh said the armed forces had carried out “surgical strikes on terror launchpads” across the Line of Control the previous night. Singh had said the action was taken after receiving information about infiltrators planning to cross the Line of Control.
Pakistan, however, said India was deliberately and erroneously using the term surgical strikes to describe existing “cross-border fire” operations in an effort to “create false effects” and “media hype”.
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