It was a harrowing time for Congress spokespersons throughout Monday, as most of them unsuccessfully scrambled to either confirm or deny their party vice-president Rahul Gandhi's meeting with Chinese Ambassador Luo Zhaohui.
Randeep Singh Surjewala took the cake with two versions. First, he virtually denied the meeting, even admonishing the media for spreading "fake news". His denial shocked the Chinese embassy here into deleting its post on the specific engagement from the mission's website.
Surjewala later accepted that Rahul indeed met the Chinese ambassador and also the Bhutanese envoy and former NSA Shiv Shankar Menon.
By the evening, Rahul himself had to take to Twitter to clear the mess. "It is my job to be informed on critical issues. I met the Chinese Ambassador, Ex-NSA, Congress leaders from NE & the Bhutanese Ambassador," he tweeted. The meeting took place on July 8.
The Congress flip-flops prompted the BJP to demand the details of the meeting that comes amid a month-long border standoff between the two countries in Doklam, a strategically important tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan.
Sources in the Congress said confusion spread because Rahul was incommunicado. Also, the party's deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma, who is authorised to talk on issues related to foreign affairs, was in Shimla.
Party sources said that Rahul's office was as usual stonewalling their queries, making spokespersons feel sheepish and unnecessarily apologetic for a routine diplomatic rendezvous.
When Rahul finally became aware of controversy, he asked spokesperson Manish Tewari to brief the media. But Tewari took his own time, making the media wait till the party's normal briefing time in the afternoon.
Finally, Rahul took charge and also sought to know from the BJP why "3 ministers are availing Chinese hospitality while the border issue is on."
In another tweet, Rahul posted an old photograph of PM Narendra Modi with Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoying a river front "jhoola ride" in Gujarat, and said: "And for the record, I am not the guy sitting on the swing while a thousand Chinese troops had physically entered India."
Notwithstanding his clarification, the terrible goof-up showed the Congress in poor light. Tewari tried to do some damage control, slamming a few TV channels for mounting a "slur campaign" against Rahul. He angrily attacked TV channels for twisting the meeting's purpose to convey a different message just because of the current standoff between India and China.
"If so much brouhaha is made about it, why did Modi meet Xi Jinping when China formally said the atmosphere was not right for the meeting? What was Prakash Javadekar doing in Beijing around the same time? Why did Tourism & Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma and Health Minister JP Nadda go to China? What a delegation of India Foundation is doing in China?"
The three ministers were in China last week on official tours despite the tension mounting due to the standoff being seen as the biggest since 1962.
India Foundation, a think-tank close to the Modi government and headed by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, is still in China.
Soon after arriving from Shimla, Sharma said meetings between diplomats and political leaders were a norm in every country. "Rahul regularly meets political leaders, diplomats, economists, intellectuals, industrialists… Why questions are being raised about his normal schedules?" he asked.
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