Blast: Who will be held accountable?

Terror has struck with impunity...yet again. This time, in the very heart of India. Precious lives have been lost, and once more, an atmosphere of fear and panic grips the nation.

From Pulwama to Pahalgam to Imphal, terror has struck at intervals, claiming innocent lives while the nation mourns, condemns the dastardly acts, and our much-vaunted intelligence agencies begin their investigations to trace those responsible.

The Red Fort blast is no exception. But then, aren’t these agencies also tasked with anticipating such heinous acts, gathering intelligence on possible threats, and thwarting them before they occur?

On paper, yes. But in reality, our security establishment has once again failed to prevent the attack. Preliminary investigations now point to a “white-collar terror module”, a term used to describe the chilling involvement of qualified doctors, sworn to save lives, allegedly taking them instead.

Several uncomfortable questions arise. First: should the Red Fort blast be counted as yet another security failure like Pulwama or Pahalgam? If so, why are our agencies failing repeatedly? And who is being held accountable?

So far, there has been deafening silence from the otherwise self-congratulatory “Chanakya” and India’s Home Minister. Opposition leaders have demanded that, given the repeated failures under his tenure, the Home Minister should take moral responsibility and resign. But that, it seems, is not to be, at least for now.

Secondly, the timing of the Delhi blast raises eyebrows. It coincides with elections underway in Bihar, where a confident NDA faces an emboldened opposition hoping to pull off a surprise victory.

Thirdly, the incident came just as the Leader of Opposition was cornering both the ruling party and the Election Commission over alleged large-scale vote theft, claims backed by purported evidence. And finally, there has been a major uproar over the ongoing SIR (Systematic Identification and Re-verification) exercise by the Election Commission, with opposition-ruled states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal challenging it in court.

But with the nation’s attention suddenly diverted to the Red Fort blast, the ruling party seems to have gained temporary respite from mounting scrutiny. Investigations into the blast have so far revealed links to Pakistan-based banned terror outfits and a possible Jammu & Kashmir connection.

But didn’t the Home Minister and his party repeatedly claim that, after the abrogation of Article 370 and Operation Sindoor, terrorism had been “almost obliterated” from the region?

Has the ruling party been trying to divert public attention from uncomfortable issues like the SIR controversy and vote theft allegations? The timing of the blast seems just too coincidental to ignore.