The Quint Debates: Pak JIT Visits India, Is the Brouhaha Worth it?

Politics & counter-terrorism measures can’t go together say experts, as they debate govt’s move to allow JIT visit.

Is the Pakistan’s JIT visit to India a political ploy or does India stand to gain something substantive out of it? (Photo: The Quint)

It was the usual political theatrics as the five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan visited the Pathankot air base on Tuesday. The Opposition, including the Congress and AAP, cried foul over allowing a probe team from Pakistan to visit the site of a terror attack on Indian soil. The Quint debates whether the move to allow the probe team from Pakistan was a rational one.

Recipe for Disaster?

Author and columnist, Rajeev Sharma, writes for The Quint that the NDA government’s move could be a recipe for disaster. While PM Modi may be drawing a leaf from Vajpayee’s outreach programme to Pakistan, the path is fraught with its own set of challenges.

This is déjà vu. India had done it before vis a vis Pakistan. Interestingly, it was the earlier BJP-led government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee which had given a long rope to Pakistan first through Vajpayee’s Lahore trip and then by the hurriedly arranged Agra Summit. But in Lahore and Agra, Vajpayee had taken his cabinet colleagues on board and the union cabinet was solidly behind him, whereas now the cabinet had no role to play.

Rajeev Sharma, Author and Columnist

‘Pakistan Deserves Another Chance’

Senior journalist KG Suresh counters Sharma’s view in an article for The Quint, where he argues that Pakistan deserves another chance. The very fact that Pakistan has accepted its limited culpability may open new doors of cooperation on counter-terrorism between the two countries.

For a country which has unabashedly nurtured, promoted and shielded anti-India terrorists of all hues over the decades and vehemently denied any involvement even in the face of hard evidence such as the capture of 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab and dossiers on criminals including Dawood Ibrahim, the very act of sending a probe team is a prima facie – though reluctant – first ever official acknowledgement of the possibility of Pakistani, state or non-state, involvement in a terrorist act in India.

KG Suresh, Senior Journalist

In a milieu where nationalist fervours run high, maybe it’s time to keep politics aside and give space to an impartial probe. In a bilateral relationship which is largely a blow hot, blow cold one, some stern step is advisable on the foreign policy front. Pakistan, which was ravaged by a deadly blast in Lahore two days ago, will also have to abide by its commitment to rooting out terrorism from its soil.