About 5000 officers and soldiers died pushing back intruding Pakistani soldiers from the heights of the Himalayas during the Kargil War. But 10 years after,The politics over the Kargil war is refusing to die down..... After almost politically distancing itself all through the years from the Kargil victory, the UPA government has now begun to embrace the victory at Kargil. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led the country yesterday in paying homage to the martyrs of Kargil war. However, two services’ chiefs did not attend the ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the victory, indicative of the importance, or lack of it, being attached to it by the UPA government. Both of them had some other engagements and sent their deputies in their place to accompany the Prime Minister, who led the country in paying tribute to the martyrs.
Unlike other war victories in the past, the victory in Kargil has become a political issue between the BJP and the Congress...... so much so that the Congress MP Rashid Alvi went on to remark that victory in Kargil was a victory for the BJP and, therefore, Congress had nothing to do with it. One can’t forget the fact that the Congress party boycotted the then Defence Minister George Fernandes in parliament over the coffin scam during the Kargil war. Kargil war, for some strange reasons, has come to be bracketed with the BJP, unlike victories of 1965 and 1971.