Samajwadi Party (SP) founder and patron Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday called Defence Minister Arun Jaitley "weak and coward" and said it is for this reason that the defence personnel are being killed on the Line of Control and elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir.
In Agra to attend a private event, when the former Defence Minister was asked by journalists to comment on the recent attacks on armymen and para-military troopers, he said a nation whose "Defence Minister is weak and coward can never take on enemies.
"I have one question for the union government and the minister concerned: why are you not able to muster courage to show the enemy their place," Yadav said.
He claimed that during his stint as the Defence Minister in the H D Deve Gowda government, he had ordered army to cross into Pakistan and teach the enemy a lesson.
Yadav also said that he had then also ordered the army to take on the enemy forces from Arunachal Pradesh to Pathankot.
The Yadav chieftain said that the Defence Minister should show courage and allow the defence forces to take on the enemy and respond in a befitting manner.