The Pakistani military establishment never lets go a chance to deny India's claims about its security preparations against the neighbouring country. On Thursday, January 5, the country's new army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa refused to concede that India had carried out "surgical strikes" in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in September 2016.
Also Read: 10 things to know about Gen Bajwa
Gen. Bajwa said that the Pakistani Army is "fully geared" to respond to "any aggression by India", Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor, the spokesperson of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the administrative military media brand of the Pakistani Army, said, according to Press Trust of India (PTI).
Ghafoor said Bajwa rejected the "self-defeating claims" of his Indian counterpart Gen. Bipin Rawat about "so-called surgical strikes", the PTI report added. Gen. Rawat, who took charge in December, stated that India would give a calibrated "hard" reply to terrorist activities, forcing Pakistan to rethink its ploy on backing terrorism.
India had carried out the surgical strikes in PoK on September 29, 10 days after a terror attack at a camp of the Indian Army in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir killed 19 soldiers.
Pakistan denies, yet attaches importance to the issue
The stance of Gen. Bajwa, who took over in November from Gen. Raheel Sharif, is not a new one. The Pakistani establishment has been denying about the Indian operation throughout, saying there was only an escalation of firing along the LoC.
However, at the same time, the Pakistani side also carried out a series of official meetings, which suggested that it was taking the Indian Army's mission more seriously than they are acknowledging. Both the army and the civilian government of Pakistan, who are otherwise at loggerheads, took a common stand on this. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also aired a caution during a Cabinet meeting in October, saying no one would be allowed to cast evil eye on his country.
The target was India, of course.
