From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Congress chief spokesman Jairam Ramesh on Monday said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent remarks attacking the Congress are simply the latest attempt to divert attention from the Modi government’s failed China policy, the most recent revelation being that since May 2020, India has lost access to 26 of the 65 patrolling points in Ladakh.
In a statement, he said since May 2020, the Modi government’s preferred strategy to deal with the Chinese incursions in Ladakh has been summed up with DDLJ — Deny, distract, lie and justify.
“The fact is that there is no comparison between 1962, when India went to war with China to defend its territory, and 2020 after which India has acquiesced to Chinese aggression with denials followed by ‘disengagements’ in which India has lost access to thousands of square kilometres of territory,” he said.
EAM Jaishankar’s implied cheap shot at Shri Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador in 2017 is ironic to say the least coming from someone who as ambassador to the US during the Obama administration presumably met with leading Republicans. Are opposition leaders not entitled to meet diplomats from countries that are important from a trade, investment and security standpoint?
Rather, the Modi government should have been truthful from the start and taken the opposition into confidence by discussing the China crisis in parliamentary standing committees and debating the issue in Parliament. At a very minimum it should have held detailed briefings for leaders of major political parties.
“It is extraordinary that EAM Jaishankar has admitted on several occasions that he has no idea why China has turned aggressive on the Line of Actual Control, notwithstanding the unusually frequent contacts between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping and the PM’s boast that he enjoys a special ‘Plus One’ relationship with President Xi.”
No amount of obfuscation can hide the fact that the Modi government has sought to cover up India’s biggest territorial setback in decades that followed PM Modi’s naive wooing of President Xi. We suggest that EAM Jaishankar and the government spend more time trying to get Chinese troops out of Depsang and Demchok and less time on blaming the opposition for their own incompetence, Jairam added.
