Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Wednesday persisted with his silence on allegations against him for preventing Delhi Police from interrogating a businessman linked to Dawood Ibrahim, but former Home Secretary RK Singh kept up his attack against his former boss.
Speaking to various TV news channels, Singh, who is now a BJP member, said Shinde was “not fit to become a Home Minister.”
Asked whom he considered to be a better Home Minister -- P Chidambaram or Shinde - Singh said “Shinde is not fit to be the Home Minister” and “Chidambaram is 100 times better” than the current Home Minister.
Singh said Shinde has been “misleading the nation on Dawood by giving wrong information”. “The FBI never said that they would help in nabbing Dawood. I was also there in FBI meetings. Why would America help us in third countryIJ”
Union Minister V Narayanasamy, however, defended the Home Minister and claimed Singh’s allegations were wrong and Shinde enjoys “impeccable integrity.” For his part, Shinde, who landed in Delhi this
morning, completely avoided the media.
Narayanasamy alleged that the former Home Secretary was talking against the Government for not getting post-retirement jobs. “I could see that RK Singh was expecting some kind of position in the Government after retirement and since it was not materialising he was making allegations. As far as Shinde is concerned, he has impeccable integrity,” he said.
Singh’s predecessor GK Pillai disapproved of Singh’s attack but said: “It was not proper. But he (Singh) has joined politics. So, it is totally a different ball game now. This is a very complex situation.”
“In my personal view, a bureaucrat should not do something in matters like these and take it up at the right level while he is in service and then be prepared to take the
consequences of the same. He should certainly not do this after retirement, or when he has joined politics. In my personal view, this incident should not have happened like this,” he said in an interview to media, when asked to respond on the issue.