Krishna proving to be another Patil: Sinha

Minister flayed over response to the debate on joint statement

Former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, who took pot shots on the Manmohan Singh government’s foreign policy in the Lok Sabha, did not spare Krishna outside the House by likening him to former home minister Shivraj Patil who was forced to resign after the Mumbai terror attacks.

“The country’s foreign policy is not safe in the hands of this external affairs minister,” Sinha told reporters. He said “he (Krishna) is proving to be the former home minister Shivraj Patil whom the Congress had to get rid of finally. Only that he is taking much less time to prove himself a Shivraj Patil.”

Sinha objected to the manner in which the external affairs minister had replied to the debate in Lok Sabha on the Indo-Pak joint statement and wondered why Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was fielded to intervene in the debate.

“We saw a very strange incident in the Lok Sabha. The government fielded Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to intervene in the debate. For the finance minister to intervene in the debate when the external affairs minister was present was strange,” he said.
“Pranab and the prime minister will not always be available for hand-holding to him (Krishna),” he said. Sinha said the external affairs minister kept on speaking on issues which were not related to the debate and said the government ducked queries on why Balochistan was included in the Indo-Pak joint statement.

DH News Service