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Vaidik-Saeed meet rocks House
Ashok Tuteja
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 15
The meeting between senior journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik and Mumbai attack plotter Hafiz Saeed rocked Parliament for the second day today even as the government strongly condemned the controversial meeting, describing it as a "diplomatic misadventure" of a private individual.

"The Government of India not only disapproves of the meeting but condemns it in the strongest terms," External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told agitated members in the Rajya Sabha. She said she had sought a report on the meeting from the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad and promised to share it with the House once it was received.

With the Congress members posing some uncomfortable questions to the government, Sushma asserted that the government had no hidden agenda and no attempt was made to conduct back channel diplomacy with Pakistan through Vaidik. “For us, Hafiz Saeed is the main culprit of the Mumbai attack.”

She said Vaidik had neither informed the government in advance about his visit to Pakistan nor after returning from there.

It was baseless to say that the government had facilitated his meeting with Saeed or anyone else in Pakistan.

Earlier in the day, Finance Minister and Leader of the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley sought to cool down the tempers over Vaidik’s meeting with the JuD chief by dissociating from Vaidik’s action or the views expressed by him in an interview to a Pakistani TV channel in which he spoke about giving independence to Jammu and Kashmir.

Jaitley said he had yesterday also stated that the government had nothing to do with either Vaidik’s visit or his meeting with someone whom India regarded as a terrorist. "This is a diplomatic misadventure of a private individual." As soon as the two Houses met for the day, Congress members were on their feet demanding to know whether the government was aware of the meeting between Vaidik, a close confidant of Ramdev and Saeed, the JuD chief.

Govt seeks report from envoy in Islamabad

Union minister Sushma Swaraj said she had sought a report from the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad.

She said it would be shared with the House once it was received.

Sushma asserted that the government had no hidden agenda.

No attempt was made to conduct back channel diplomacy with Pakistan through Vaidik.