Story in numbers: No major terror attack since 2014, says Rajnath Singh

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, while addressing an execut­ive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in Gujarat’s Ke­va­dia on September 2, 2021, claim­ed that India has seen no major terror attack since Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined office in 2014.

“This government will never allow any terrorist intentions to be successful. Since Narendra Modi has come as the Prime Minister, forget Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), India's hinterland has not witnessed any major terror act,” newspapers quoted him as saying.

While speaking in Lok Sabha in November 2019, Rajnath Singh earlier too had said that except for J&K, no terror attack had occurred in the country in the last five years.

This is not supported by facts.

According to a Lok Sabha reply by the Ministry of Home Affairs on March 23, 2021, there have been six incidents in “the hinterland of the country” (everywhere except J&K and North-eastern states and LWE areas) — three in 2014 and one each in 2015, 2016 and 2018. As many as 11 security force personnel and 11 civilians were killed in these attacks.

Further, J&K alone witnessed 2,546 terrorist incidents between 2014 and 2020, shows data presented in Lok Sabha. In these attacks, 481 security force personnel and 215 civilians were killed.

Notably, a previous Lok Sabha response by the Home Ministry on December 19, 2018 mentioned that there was “a major terrorist attack in the hinterland” in 2015 and 2016 each.