Having created a stir with his Pakistan visit, cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday invoked Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Lahore bus ride at a press conference in Chandigarh. He also recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise meeting with his former counterpart Nawaz Sharif to validate his overtures and assert that “peace is the only answer to the endless bloodshed on our borders”.
Sidhu, who is a Minister in the Punjab government headed by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, attended the swearing-in ceremony of his friend and former cricketer Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan in Islamabad on August 18. Since then, he has been attacked by the BJP — and even been snubbed by Amarinder — for hugging Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Two days ago, Amarinder said Sidhu’s hug with Bajwa was “not a nice gesture and was completely avoidable”.
No parallel: BJP
Responding to today’s press meet, the BJP particularly criticised Sidhu for placing himself “in the same league as PM Modi and former PM Vajpayee”.
Sidhu had recalled Vajpayee’s Lahore bus ride and Modi’s unscheduled visit to Pakistan in his press conference on Tuesday morning. “Vajpayeeji went to Lahore and extended his hand in friendship. But then there was Kargil and 527 soldiers were killed. Did anyone blame him or questioned his love for the country? Modiji went to Pakistan uninvited. Is he any less of a nationalist?” asked the Congress leader.
A furious BJP responded by attacking Congress President Rahul Gandhi for “sending his envoy to hug the Pakistan army chief” and “running a parallel diplomacy”. Addressing a press conference at the ruling party headquarters, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said: “The sense of equivalence he (Sidhu) tried to draw between himself and Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is very surprising. You are not the Prime Minister. You are a minister in a State government. It is inappropriate for him to put himself in the same league as the PM and the former PM.”
Patra further accused Rahul of trying to dictate diplomatic policy by allowing such visits as Sidhu’s to Pakistan.
“Rahulji, you cannot run a parallel government. Diplomacy is the preserve of the Centre. If any decision has to be taken, it will be taken by the Central government. It is not taken by any State government and its ministers. Before you gave permission to your envoy, you should have thought that you do not have the authority to do it...We cannot believe that an Indian leader can hold a press conference of the nature Sidhu held today. He claims he went to Pakistan as a cricketer but the kit that he used today was that of a politician. He gave a lecture to the nation on diplomacy. Where was the need for the Congress party to hug the Pakistan army chief and sit next to the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir President Masood Khan?” he asked.
Sidhu, on his part, said his decision to attend Imran Khan’s swearing in was not “political” but a response to a “warm invitation from a friend”. He said that he hugged the Pakistan army chief in an “emotional” moment, when the General told him that they were making efforts to open the corridor from India’s Dera Baba Nanak to the Sikh shrine of Kartarpur Sahib.