In a tongue-in-cheek reply to a query about Pakistan’s latest remarks saying the case against Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Hafeez Saeed was “half-baked”, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that Pakistan was welcome to “bake it fully”.

“If it is half-baked, they are welcome to bake it fully,” Chidambaram said responding to media queries about Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s latest remarks stating that a “half-baked case” on Saeed could not be taken to court.

“All the baking ingredients are in Pakistan. The entire evidence is on Pakistani soil. They are most welcome to bake it fully and take it to court,” Chidambaram said adding that all evidence available on Indian soil had been shared with Pakistan and that the remaining evidence is “on Pakistani soil”.

Responding to another query about the government’s stance on issuing visas to semi-skilled and unskilled workers, Chidambaram made it clear that the government would not encourage visas for these category of workers. “We have a lot of unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the country and there is no dearth. However, if it is a case of specially skilled or high-skilled, we may consider it but only till the project is set up,” the Home Minister said.

Indian government recently gave a month’s time to China to convert the visas of its nationals from business visas to employment visas. Indian Mission in China have issued over 1.6 lakh business visas to Chinese nationals since 2007. Asked about the status of the Chinese employees who were reportedly missing from the Balco site after last week’s accident that killed 45 people, Chidambaram said that none of these 89 Chinese employees was “missing” and that they had been asked to stay back to help during the investigations.

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