Foreign vs Home: the gulf is widening — and it isn’t new

The MEA also complains that the MHA doesn’t share key findings with it,such as those from David Headley’s interrogations. Or details of Home Minister P Chidambaram’s visit to Islamabad. Result: exasperated MEA officials,in the run-up to Krishna’s visit to Pakistan,found their hands tied while preparing notes on terror-related points. And so kept referring to these in general terms,like “issues discussed in HM’s visit.”

All that was agreed to was that India could propose Home Secretary-level talks as one of the announcements after Krishna’s meetings. But those announcements never happened.

One key factor behind the MEA-MHA dissonance is the fact that the Home Ministry,for the first time in many years,is asserting itself. For instance,it wants to legitimately own the visa-issuing process. On paper,the Home Ministry is responsible for this but for long much of the discretion lay with embassies and that was because there was no system by which North Block could be involved in the day-to-day issuing of visas.

Headley’s case re-ignited this conflict as the MEA reminded Home Ministry of its role when questions were asked about visas issued to the man who scoped Mumbai for the 26/11 plotters. In return,the Home Ministry decided to take over the process. And to begin with,it wanted to control the entry of Pakistan nationals and people of Pakistani-origin.

So now,every Pakistani or Pakistani-origin visa applicant needs to be scrutinized by the Home Ministry and related agencies. There is also a new online process by which the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has to upload every visa application,which can then be accessed by Home Ministry here with a decision time of 30 days.

The High Commissioner can use personal discretion only if there is no response within that time period. A bulk of the visas issued in Islamabad were at the High Commissioner’s discretion. An alarmed MEA has asked the MHA to create categories for people like artists,businessmen,journalists,among others,who need not be scrutinized. The matter is being hotly contested between both sides of Raisina Hill.

Incidentally,this is not the first time that MEA has had issues with the Home Secretary. Last November,Pillai commented on North-East insurgent groups receiving arms supplies from China. This upset Beijing,which is said to have taken up the matter diplomatically. When New Delhi,after checking with the Home Ministry,took the line that Pillai may have been quoted out of context,it is believed that the Chinese side produced a videotape to substantiate its claim. This infuriated the MEA further while the Home Ministry maintained that Pillai’s remarks were played out of context.

Next,came the Pune blasts in February,barely weeks after India had again made a move for reopening talks with Pakistan. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao was to meet her counterpart in the last week of February. When the state government dithered from speaking to the media on the day of the blast,the task was entrusted to Pillai. His mention of Headley having surveyed targets in Pune was seen as being speculative by some quarters in South Block as that indicated a Pakistan hand. Again,the wariness was that this would not augur well ahead of the FS-level talks. Those talks eventually achieved little headway.

Then,of course,came the row over Canada not issuing visas to defence and intelligence officials who had served in Jammu and Kashmir. Here,North Block wanted the MEA to take stern action and ensure removal of the Canadian embassy official responsible for issuing such bizarre and accusatory notes about human rights violations by these agencies. The MEA,on the other hand,wanted to handle it deftly as the Prime Minister was to visit Canada a month later in June.

In that visit,India and Canada were to sign a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that would end the ugly chapter when Ottawa suspected India of wrongly using reactors it had supplied for purposes of carrying out the first nuclear test in 1974. The MEA felt that instead of targeting individuals,the matter should be taken up with the Canadian government and once an apology was tendered,matters should rest there as there was a relationship to build. North Block was not too happy with the result.

Sources point out that senior PMO officials have had to do a lot of bridge-building between the two ministries but the gap has not narrowed. A public spat,sources said,was waiting to happen and Krishna’s disappointing visit to Islamabad seems to have provided that occasion.