Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Tuesday responded to BJP IT department head Amit Malviya's post on social media about his father Rajesh Pilot dropped bombs as an Indian Air Force pilot in Mizoram in March 1966. Pilot said the facts and dates were wrong in the post as his father was commissioned into the force in October 1966.
Hitting out at the BJP leader, Pilot said, "@amitmalviya - You have the wrong dates, wrong facts…Yes, as an Indian Air Force pilot, my late father did drop bombs. But that was on erstwhile East Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pak war and not as you claim, on Mizoram on the 5th of March 1966."
"He was commissioned into the IAF only on 29th October 1966! (Certificate attached). Jai hind and a happy Independence Day," the Congress leader said on X and shared the certificate according to which Rajesh Pilot was commissioned in the Indian Air Force on October 29, 1966.
Earlier, Malviya, in post on X - formerly known as Twitter- had claimed Rajesh Pilot and Suresh Kalmadi were flying the Indian Air Force planes that bombed Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, on March 5, 1966.
"Rajesh Pilot and Suresh Kalmadi were flying the Indian Air Force planes that bombed Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, on 5 March 1966. Later both became MPs on Congress ticket and ministers in the government. It is clear that Indira Gandhi gave them a place in politics as a reward, gave respect to those who carried out air raids on their own people in the Northeast," BJP leader's post read.
The Congress last week hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his criticism of then PM Indira Gandhi's decision to use the Indian Air Force in Mizoram in 1966, saying he "twisted decisions" taken by his predecessors out of their political and historical context to score "petty debating points".
Responding to the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, PM Modi had referred to incidents such as the use of the Air Force to "attack the people in Mizoram", a radio transmission of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962 leaving the people of the northeast to fend for themselves during the Chinese invasion as cases in point of Congress' "neglect" of the region.
