Irate Sinha asks MoS to do his homework well

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha is understood to have asked his Minister of State, Digvijay Singh, to pay serious attention to offi...

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha is understood to have asked his Minister of State, Digvijay Singh, to pay serious attention to official briefings before answering questions in Parliament. The senior minister’s advice to Digvijay came after the latter was rather economical with truth in the Rajya Sabha this Thursday. He went on record in the House saying that Portugal has decided to hand over underworld don Abu Salem to India. The mafia don is currently in jail in Lisbon.

It is learnt that Digvijay called up Sinha in Moscow on Thursday afternoon and reported the chain of events that led to his reply on the Salem question in the Rajya Sabha. In midst of the two-day (Feb 19-20) India-Russia bilateral interaction, Sinha apparently was unhappy with his Minister of State. He apparently told Singh on phone that he should have paid more attention to the official briefing for starred questions in Parliament.

Sinha, who proceeded to the NAM summit after the Moscow bilateral engagement, directed Singh that he should in no way try to rectify the ‘‘mistake’’ on Salem or change his Rajya Sabha statement as it would be construed that the minister had mislead Parliament and he could be hauled up by the Privileges Committee.

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According to highly placed sources, Singh was briefed by Bambit Roy, a Joint Secretary handling the Counsellor and Visa Department in the ministry on the Salem affair. It is understood that Singh was clearly told that the Indian extradition plea for Salem was lying with the Portuguese authorities and the legal process for extraditing the gangster was still on. An enthusiastic Singh, replying to a question from MP Rajiv Shukla, ignored the cold facts and told the House that Portugal was sending Salem to India.

While Singh has been fighting shy of the media since the Salem fiasco, this is not the first time that the junior Foreign Minister has put the Government in an embarrassing situation. Last year, Singh went on a private television channel confirming that Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee was going for the now-postponed SAARC summit in Islamabad (This summit was to be held in January 2003). Piqued by the minister talking out of turn, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra, it seems, requested Sinha to pull up Singh.

The Samata Party minister apparently could not care less. He is said to have told an irate Sinha that he was only reiterating a decision taken by the External Affairs Minister at the SAARC ministerial conference in Kathmandu earlier that year.