On 24 December 1999 an Indian Airlines plane, flight IC 814, was hijacked to Kandahar. The matter still pops up in the country's political discourse as the opposition party seeks to highlight a 'security' agenda ahead of the national polls to the country's parliament. The centrist UPA alliance points to this episode as an example of pusillanimity when three terrorists were released in exchange for 150 odd passengers.

There are very many aspects of the Kandahar hijacking which would highlight how the GIRT shapes up. The problem with this episode is that being a hijack case it enters into the realm of 'technicalities' as 'security' experts take over and get into the nitty-gritty of the case. The political aspects of the case tend to get sidelined in the argument.

Suffice it to say that India made a concerted attempt to get Pakistan labelled as a state sponsor of terrorism and failed. American interlocutors just wouldn't buy it – there were too many 'security' lapses in the entire episode for the world to even begin to take cognisance of the political dimensions of the case.

In an interaction with Outlook (Outlook, India, 17 January 2000) then senior fellow of The Brookings Institution Stephen Cohen summed up the position for India in a hard-headed way. "The Indian behaviour in Kandahar was correct, but no state, especially one with claims to be a great state, or one that simply wants to protect its citizens, should have ignored the air safety issue for so many years. When I fly PIA or Air Lanka, there's certainly a tough security check, as is the case with EI Al. The best way to stop hijacking is at the earliest stage. Later on, at Amritsar, there also seems to have been a breakdown of the "system"...It is clear that the Indian government (and the states) can perform admirably, and professionally, but the system tends to get lazy and sloppy, and over-bureaucratised. It is, as many have written, a state with a hard face but a flabby interior."

Respected intelligence and security expert, and author of 'The Kaoboys of R&AW', B Raman, summed up the Kandahar episode as a "total lack of coherence and professionalism in the handling of the crisis by the crisis management groups at the political and professional levels."

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