“For several decades, our country tolerated terrorism,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi on Independence Day this year. “Now, we have established a new normal.”

He was referring to his government’s policy of not distinguishing between the Pakistani state and the network of terror outfits that allegedly act at its behest. India took this view after Operation Sindoor, which was meant to avenge the loss of 26 lives in the terror attack at a popular tourist spot in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, on April 22.

Six months on, Monday’s car explosion near the same Red Fort that Modi spoke from has left at least 13 people dead so far. The government took two days just to officially acknowledge that the incident was an act of terrorism.

However, rather than taking the prime minister to task on this issue, his political opponents are treading with caution. While some MPs and spokespersons have condemned the security failure, top Opposition leaders have thus far avoided cornering the government on its repeated failure to prevent terror attacks.

Social media politics

The blast on Monday occurred an evening before the second and final phase of voting in Bihar, where Assembly elections are underway. This, coupled with the lack of clarity on the nature and provenance of the explosion, perhaps explains why many politicians stuck to safer expressions of shock and dismay while offering condolences to the families of the dead and injured.

Congress party’s Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, put up such social media posts that night. Others like Akhilesh Yadav called for a quick and thorough investigation.

However, despite more details emerging in the last two days about the blast’s links to a “terror module”, no major Opposition figure has visited the site of the explosion or met those who lost their loved ones in it.

Only the Aam Aadmi Party and the Delhi unit of the Congress sent delegations to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan hospital, where the injured were receiving treatment. These local leaders, too, limited themselves to questioning how the government had handled the fallout of the blast and not the larger issues of terrorism and national security.

Partha Bhowmick, a Lok Sabha MP from Trinamool Congress, asked for a court-monitored investigation into the Delhi incident. Supriya Shrinate, chairperson of the Congress party’s social media department, criticised the timing of the prime minister’s trip to Bhutan.

A similar argument was made by Aam Aadmi Party’s national spokesperson Sanjay Singh, who wrote on X: “The country is in pain while Modi is on a plane… For how long will the nation tolerate such an insensitive prime minister?”

Modi was in the Himalayan country for two days to take part in the birthday celebrations of its former king. Returning to Delhi on Wednesday, he made a quick stop at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan hospital. Earlier, Home Minister Amit Shah had also gone to the hospital as well as the site of the explosion on Monday.

Top Opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are yet to make any such visits. In sharp contrast, the Bharatiya Janata Party, before it came to power at the Centre, used to rush in pinning down the Congress on the issue of terrorism.

Modi himself went to Mumbai while the November 2008 terror attack was still unfolding and criticised Manmohan Singh, who was the prime minister then.

A difficult needle to thread

The Opposition’s muted response to the Delhi car explosion is in keeping with past trends. As Scroll had reported after the Pahalgam attack, Modi’s opponents are wary of taking him head-on when it comes to national security.

Analysts attribute this to their inability to evolve a clear strategy for countering the BJP on this front. After Operation Sindoor, for example, some Opposition leaders lampooned the prime minister for supposedly agreeing to a ceasefire with Pakistan under American pressure. However, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a senior journalist and Modi’s biographer, argued that this was not a sound tactic.

“Congress party’s responses at the time showed that it is very difficult to put the government on the mat unless you are willing to walk up the path of irresponsibility,” he contended. “You cannot become a warmonger to mock Modi. You have to show people the hollowness of Modi’s boasts and his false bravery.”

Yashovardhan Jha Azad, a retired police officer who spent years working in India’s security establishment, also said that the Opposition must ask the Modi government “pointed” questions.

“This is a major and dangerous terror module,” he added. “Not that there is any guarantee that such an attack could have been staved off in any other regime. But questions have to be asked and responsibility needs to be fixed.”

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