Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, it seems, is yet tocome to terms with his present position. A strongman of the Congress’pinch-and-cachinnate battery, he forgets his new chair hardly allows him thatluxury. After his recent gaffes have invited guffaws and sparked criticisms, wehope he learns the bitter truth soon.
In the eye of storm for his unwarranted comment that he hadevidence that BJP and RSS had run Hindu terror camps, Shinde is learnt to havetold reporters at the Congress’ chintan shivir in Jaipur: “Reports have comeduring investigation that BJP and RSS conduct terror training camps to spreadterrorism… Bombs were planted in Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid and also ablast was carried out in Malegaon.”
When the BJP attacked Shinde and demanded an apology fromCongress president Sonia Gandhi, Shinde later told reporters that he hadreferred to “saffron terrorism,” which was nothing new and appeared innewspapers several times in the past.
But this was not all. Shinde’s casual remark assumedinternational significance when Mumbai attacks mastermind and Lashkar-e-Toiba(LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed on Monday sought to exploit Shinde's jibe against RSSand BJP saying Indian "propaganda" against Pakistani organisations ofspreading terror now stood "exposed". Saeed, for whom the US hasannounced a $10 million bounty, told a press conference in Lahore that Indiaalways resorted to propaganda against Pakistani organizations but it now stood"exposed".
He claimed: "India tried to involve us in the Mumbaiattacks but after a passage of five years, nothing has been established againstus in the courts". Saeed, who now heads JuD, also made a ridiculous demandasking the Pakistan government to take steps to get India declared "aterrorist state" by the UN Security Council.
While it will take Shinde some time to understand the scopeand importance of his chair, let’s take a look at some of his quotable quoteswhich he made recently.
It seems Sushilkumar Shinde is the man the home ministrychair had been waiting for years. Acting in a style more suited to a spy agencychief, Shinde has been in the habit of dropping nuggets of information thatonly he and he alone is in the possession of. On an earlier occasion (late lastyear), he said while speaking at the Interpol conference in Rome that he hadcredible information of terror groups investing in stock markets. After playinghoopla-cum-I-spy with reporters over which terror groups and which stockmarkets for days, it came out that Indian intelligence agencies hadinvestigated and ruled out this possibility a couple of years ago. But somehowthe idea dead in the investigating agencies’ files kept ticking like a bomb inShinde’s mind until it chose to explode right in the middle of his speech atthe Rome conference of the Interpol.
Then soon after Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s hanging atthe Yerawada jail of Pune when mediapersons ran helter-skelter begging for aquote as to who all knew about the secret hanging, Shinde appeared on the scenein a deus ex machina. Speaking in a no-nonsense style, Shinde stood larger thanlife on all TV channels saying that he and only he knew about the plan. “I am aformer policeman and this is my style of working,” he is learnt to have said.
in association with Governance Now
