Shinde pulls up MHA officials for poor speech drafts

Days after he purportedly read the Srinagar CRPF camp attack statement twice in the Lok Sabha, Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Friday gave a dressing down to top officials in his ministry for landing him into embarrassing situations.

The upshot is that Shinde has a new private secretary, a joint secretary, who has been made in charge of drafting statements for the minister and a new ministry spokesman.

While the government remained tight-lipped over the issue, Shinde expressed his serious anguish over repeated gaffe in Parliament due to shoddily prepared statements by the ministry officials.

During the high level briefing on March 15, Shinde vented his anger before home secretary RK Singh and asked senior officials to pull up their socks.

Apparently, Shinde was not only peeved with the drafting of CRPF attack statement but also with the fact that the home ministry was at variance on the number of fidayeen involved in March 13 attack.

Latest faux pas in the Lok Sabha happened as the minister had two statements in hand with ministry officials drafting a statement in which the first two paragraphs were in self-praise of the efforts to stop cross-LoC infiltration rather than get to the direct point on Srinagar attack.

It is understood that an angry Shinde reminded ministry officials that it was due to their casual approach that he had been embarrassed in Parliament.

He reminded them of their mistakes like attaching honorific "Mr or Shri" to LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, giving out names of rape victims and wrongly addressing "Chairman of Rajya Sabha" as Speaker.