Panaji: "There is nothing big" about the retaliatory surgical strike by elite military commandos on Myanmar soil earlier this week, Congress Working Committee member Luizinho Faleiro said here on Friday.
He added that such operations were routine and the BJP was making a "mountain out of a molehill".
Faleiro, who was the All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in-charge of the north-eastern states for six years until last year, was speaking to reporters at the state party headquarters.
"But our soldiers (are) killing them...because those borders are totally porous. They are doing it everyday. This was only a bravado. Such actions are normal," Faleiro said, referring to the strike earlier this week by Indian army`s 21 Para Special Forces on militants of a terror group, who on June 4 had killed 18 soldiers in an ambush in Manipur`s Chandel district.
While the National Democratic Alliance government first said that the "surgical strikes" were conducted on Myanmar soil, in subsequent statements, ministers of the central government exercised caution by saying that the retaliatory attack was carried out along the India-Myanmar border.
Faleiro, now the state Congress president, said that the only novel element about the retaliatory attack by the Indian military this time round was that it was "a little more organised".
"The way they went and acted this time, may be a little more organised, but our military (is) going and is doing it very regularly. There is nothing big about it," Faleiro said.
The former Goa chief minister also accused the BJP of making much about the killer strike.
"That is typically BJP`s agenda to go to the press to make an issue, make a mountain of a molehill. But I don`t want to make comments to bring the morale of the armed forces down, because I know they are doing a wonderful job of it out there," Faleiro said.
