The Hindu Journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik during his meeting with Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan
As Parliament witnessed disruptions for the second consecutive day over an Indian journalist’s meeting with terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday condemned the meeting and said the government had sought a report on the engagements of the journalist in Pakistan during his three-week stay there.
The Congress, which first raised the issue on Monday, went on the offensive on Tuesday, disrupting the Lok Sabha repeatedly seeking adjournment of question hour and an explanation on Ved Pratap Vaidik’s meeting with JuD chief Hafiz Saeed. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi even described Mr. Vaidik as an RSS man while talking to journalists outside Parliament.
A brief statement by Ms. Swaraj in the Lok Sabha and subsequently in the Rajya Sabha, asserting that the government had nothing to do with the meeting, failed to satisfy the elders.
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad wanted the Minister to explain why the government remained silent for so many days and whether it had received any report from either the Indian mission in Pakistan or intelligence agencies on the event.
Rejecting the insinuations that Mr. Vaidik was an “envoy” of the government, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, “The allegation that the government facilitated the journalist’s meeting with Hafiz Saeed is false and baseless. We distance [ourselves] completely from the comments made by the journalist on Kashmir in his media interviews [in Pakistan].”
In the Lok Sabha, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan told the Opposition members not to take the House for granted by staging protests during question hour. “Suspension of question hour is not done. Question hour is for all the members. If you do not want the question hour, drop it. I do not have any objection. But do not make it [disruption] a precedent,” she said.
In the Rajya Sabha, Leader of the House Arun Jaitley said he was reiterating what he had said on Monday in unambiguous terms that the government had nothing to do with the meeting, which he termed a “diplomatic misadventure of a private individual.”
“The Indian state, Government of India, political party has nothing to do with it [the meeting]. If there is one party in the last 67 years that has a stronger line on Jammu and Kashmir it is my party. The person with such views [as expressed in interview to Pakistan media] has nothing to do with the government or our party,” Mr. Jaitley said.
As Congress members stormed into the well seeking the arrest of the journalist, Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien adjourned the House.
Later, at a Congress briefing, party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala claimed that the Indian High Commission in Pakistan knew of the meeting and described Mr. Vaidik as the “spokesperson of a yoga guru, the ideological guru of the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi].”
Mr. Vaidik, he added, was also a member of the Vivekananda Foundation, an RSS-inspired think tank from “which both the National Security Adviser and the Principal Secretary” have been drawn.
Later, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, responding to the Congress allegations, told journalists that Mr. Vaidik had gone to Pakistan with a 13-member delegation that included Congress leaders Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyar.
(With additional reporting by Smita Gupta)
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