Additionally, the BJP has been taking on Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi for his question on how many fighter jets were lost during Operation Sindoor and for criticising the decisions of Jaishankar.
Much of these charges against the Congress leaders of the past—be it Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira, Rajiv Gandhi, Narashimha Rao and Manmohan Singh—seemingly cannot be taken at face value given the political rhetoric involved in the slugfest with the Congress party.
Of late, Dubey has been posting a clutch of declassified US documents to make various statements ranging from the 1972 Simla Agreement to Operation Brasstacks, a military exercise carried out by the Indian armed forces in 1986-87.
For instance, the BJP MP has shared on ‘X’ a declassified 1963 telegram message of the US State Department to claim that Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were responsible for decisions that led to territorial concessions to Pakistan. Meetings were held between 1962 and 1964 between Swaran Singh and Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he posted.
Dubey further claimed that India had decided to give back to Pakistan the territory forcibly occupied in Poonch and Uri. “The matter did not stop at this; the entire Neelam and Kishanganga valley in Gurez was made the international border along with the Line of Control (LoC),” he added.
Similarly, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla has slammed the Congress for its willingness to “hand over a large part of J&K to Pakistan in the 1960s under foreign pressure.”
In his memoir, ‘Outside the Archives’, Y.D.Gundevia, a foreign secretary under Nehru, writes: “Thus it was that on February 10, 1963, in Karachi, the ‘Kashmir’ map was on the table between Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s PM, and Sardar Swaran Singh. Our delegation asked Bhutto to show on the map what he actually wanted. Bhutto leaned over the table and pointed to the little town of Kathua on the Kashmir-Himachal border. He drew a circle somewhere there with his forefinger and said, ‘You can have this part of Kashmir. We want the rest’.”
Held in the aftermath of 1962 India-China War, six sessions were held but they ended in a stalemate as Pakistan insisted on its demands for a territorial settlement.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera has slammed the BJP MP for quoting Pakistan’s Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to attack Congress. “…And this broker-turned-pseudo-historian should know that Sardar Swaran Singh and Mr. Bhutto had six rounds of talks in 1963 but all in India and Pakistan. Not in a “neutral site” as was mentioned as part of the ceasefire on May 10th 2025 by Jaishankar’s friend US Secretary of State Marco Rubio,” he posted on ‘X’.
In another post on ‘X’, Khera lampooned the Godda MP, saying that he was “being fed with US archival material”. He suggested that Dubey read books by military historian Srinath Raghavan and former diplomat Chandrasekhar Dasgupta to understand the full history of 1971.
Dubey, meanwhile, has gone on to make various claims. He has alleged that the Congress under Indira gave away 828 sq km of Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch to Pakistan after winning the 1965 war.
He has further claimed that PM Manmohan Singh had almost reached an agreement with Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 to give up Siachen.
Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed has slammed the Modi government for its tactics to deploy its functionaries like Dubey for taking on the opposition party.
“On one hand, PM Modi is saying the opposition and government are on one page on national security issues and on the other hand, he is allowing others like Nishikant Dubey and Amit Malviya to attack the Congress,” she told ThePrint.
“Nishikant does not believe in the Constitution; he raised a question mark on the Supreme Court (on the Waqf law and for setting a timeline for the President to clear Bills). The attack is happening on behalf of Modi.”
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No-holds barred attack
These statements, however, have not stopped the BJP functionaries from taking swipes at the Congress on episodes like the Sharm el-Sheikh memorandum of 2009.
Dubey has attacked former prime minister Manmohan Singh for certifying that Pakistan is a victim of terrorism.
“An extremely shameful incident occurred in Sharm el-Sheikh when the then Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, embraced Pakistan’s President Musharraf and issued a joint statement claiming that, like India, Pakistan too is grappling with terrorism. Giving such a big certificate to a terrorist nation? This is the dark chapter of Congress, this is the truth,” he tweeted last week.
BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya has trained his guns twice on Rajiv Gandhi—for putting out details of Operation Brasstacks and for “compromising” India’s nuclear doctrine.
“In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an agreement with Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto that compromised India’s nuclear doctrine before it was even formally established,” he posted on ‘X’. “While it was framed as a confidence-building measure, in reality, it revealed India’s nuclear infrastructure to an adversary that has repeatedly sponsored terrorism and conflict.”
In her book, ‘Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West,’ Benazir has called the 1988 agreement a “remarkable treaty”.
“In foreign policy, we made broad overtures even to those who had been our adversaries—and, of course, to those who had stood by us in the past. I am particularly proud of our work with Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, building on the progress in Pakistan-Indian relations that our parents had established in the Simla Accord,” she writes.
“Rajiv and I negotiated a remarkable treaty committing our nations not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities. This was the first nuclear confidence-building treaty between Pakistan and India.”
Former Indian diplomat Vivek Katju explained the nuances behind the signing of ‘Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities between India and Pakistan’ in 1988.
“Any agreement is done to boost bilateral relations. Since a nuclear plant has radioactive material, countries exchange information about their plants to avoid any mishappening or misadventure. If a leak happens, thousands of people can die. So such an agreement is executed to avoid such risks. It cannot be called a compromise of national security,” Katju, who served as secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) from 2009 to 2011, told ThePrint.
As for Malviya, the BJP IT cell head has dragged Rajiv Gandhi in one of his long posts on how Operation Brasstacks “was derailed not by strategy, but by political weakness.”
“The exercise was no secret. Pakistan was formally informed via military and diplomatic channels, including at the SAARC Summit in Bangalore where PM Rajiv Gandhi assured Pakistan’s PM Junejo it was ‘just an exercise’,” Malviya claimed.
“Despite these reassurances, Pakistan escalated tensions by moving offensive troops across the Sutlej River, right up to Indian Punjab’s border. On January 22, 1987, Pakistan crossed critical military thresholds while Khalistani extremists announced support for a separatist movement, raising fears of internal unrest.
“India, caught off guard, hesitated. On January 23, it finally deployed troops to the border—but just one day later, Rajiv Gandhi abruptly backtracked, announcing there would be no attack and opting for diplomacy instead,” he posted.
Former ambassador to Pakistan, TCA Raghavan, in his book ‘The People Next Door: The Curious History of India-Pakistan Relations’, highlights the context of notifying each other in advance about military exercises.
Pakistan diplomat Humayun Khan, he mentions, got a sense of the magnitude only when he was asked to meet minister of state for external affair Natwar Singh very early one morning. He was told that the Pakistan Army moved two divisions to Punjab border and that India regarded this as offensive move. Unless the troops went back to the peacetime locations within 24 hours, India wouldl be compelled to move its own forces.
“Humayun Khan was astounded at ultimatum and possibly doubly so because he had no reason to presume that such crisis was brewing over Operation Brasstacks. He conveyed to Islamabad that it would be tragedy if a conflict was to erupt nearly because of suspicion,” he writes.
One of the results was a written agreement that both sides would in future notify each other in advance of military exercise being carried out, Raghavan adds.
Dubey, meanwhile, accused the Congress of sharing information about military movement to Pakistan. “The Congress, in 1991, supported the Chandrashekhar government that backed the pact. Later, the Congress-led Narasimha Rao government in 1994 implemented the pact requiring India to share army, navy and air force movement details with Pakistan. This is treason, and those responsible must face trial,” he said.
Among other claims, the BJP MP has alleged that Indira Gandhi stopped the pension, vehicle, and facilities of General Sam Manekshaw despite the tradition of Field Marshals being entitled to these benefits for their entire lives.
Appointed Army chief in June 1969, General Manekshaw had led the Indian Army to victory during the 1971 India-Pakistan War. He was promoted to the rank of field marshal in January 1973.
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‘They don’t read…’
A Congress veteran, who has also been a Union minister, deplored the tactics of digging out past episodes to score political brownie points.
“The problem with today’s leaders is they don’t read and respond accordingly. Several governments from Nehru to Manmohan Singh tried to resolve the Kashmir problem in their way and make peace with Pakistan. When all-party delegations are visiting across the world, the BJP allowed few leaders to score political points. During the Vajpayee rule, R.K.Mishra held back channel negotiations and the Chenab formula was discussed,” the Congress veteran told ThePrint.
Mishra, a veteran journalist, was Vajpayee’s point person for back-channel talks with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif’s emissary Niaz Naik in 1999.
“(Former diplomat) Satinder Lambah has written quoting G. Parthasarathy, the High Commissioner of India in Pakistan during Kargil (war), that New Delhi would agree to adjustment in LoC eventually being moved to the Chenab river basin,” the above-mentioned Congress functionary told ThePrint.
“Vajpayee was open to LoC as an international border if Pakistan didn’t claim more land and was ready to stop the proxy war in J&K. But, it did not materialise. It means Vajpayee was ready to leave the claim on PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). It was discussed in the CCS (Cabinet Committee on Security) and with the envoy, but we never raised this to score brownie points.”
Similarly, former Army chief General V.P.Malik (retired) recounted how he had met former prime ministers Atal Bijhari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh after the 1999 Kargil War and requested them to keep the Army out of politics.
“The Vajpayee government was an interim one and election was around the corner. I had gone to meet the prime minister and requested him that please leave us alone. ‘We are apolitical.’ I had even met Manmohan Singh and requested the same. Both leaders agreed with my viewpoint. Today, I see political leaders indulge in mud slinging to score political points. It’s sad,” the former Army chief told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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