NEW DELHI: The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) is not effective in fighting terrorism, the Congress said on Monday. Even when it was in force, there were more than 40 terrorist strikes, it said.

With the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) repeatedly accusing the United Progressive Alliance Government of being soft on terrorism and demanding that POTA be re-enacted, the Congress listed several instances, including the attacks on the Akshardham temple at Gandhinagar and the Raghunath temple in Jammu, and on pilgrims to Amarnath and Vaishnoo Devi, of terrorist attacks when the law was in force.

"What is more, Azhar Mahmood, who was escorted by the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Kandahar in Afghanistan [in the wake of a plane hijack], masterminded the attack on Parliament," Congress spokesman Satyavrat Chaturvedi said at a briefing here.

The UPA Government was determined to fight terrorism and had not gone down on its knees, as alleged by the BJP. "How come the BJP is accusing us of being soft on terrorism? Was it not true that Kargil was planned when the Lahore bus trip was undertaken, and was not General Pervez Musharraf invited to Agra? The BJP has to clarify why it adopts double standards," Mr. Chaturvedi said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made it clear that talks with Pakistan would depend on Islamabad fulfilling its January 2004 promise of not allowing terrorists to use its soil for carrying out attacks against India, Mr. Chaturvedi said.

The Congress demanded that the Government conduct a probe into the revelations made by Mr. Jaswant Singh in a book on the Kandahar hijack episode.

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