Rahul Gandhi meets Chinese envoy amid Sikkim standoff

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 9

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Chinese envoy to India at the height of the ongoing Sino-Indian border tension in Doklam, in a move that may potentially trigger a political controversy.

Gandhi met Luo Zhaohui over the weekend though the Congress kept the place and time of the meeting secret

It's my job to be informed on critical issues, Gandhi tweeted on his meeting with the Chinese Ambassador. 

It is my job to be informed on critical issues. I met the Chinese Ambassador, Ex-NSA, Congress leaders from NE & the Bhutanese Ambassador

— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG)

(Follow ; and )

After daylong speculations over the meeting today, Congress media head Randeep Surjewala admitted that the meeting indeed took place and said Gandhi also met the Bhutanese ambassador to India.

Surjewala sought to assert that there was nothing special about the meeting Gandhi had with the Chinese Ambassador and that the envoys of top five nations in the world, the G-5 keep meeting Congress president and Congress vice-president.

The timing of the meeting, however, may raise eyebrows in political circles with the BJP expected to attack Gandhi for the meeting at a time when India and China are witnessing the worst border standoff in more than 30 years.

A section of reports said the Chinese embassy today posted the information of Gandhi meeting Zhaohui on its website but later retracted the same. This could not be independently verified though.

Interestingly, hours earlier Surjewala had tweeted denying such a meeting between Gandhi and the Chinese envoy when some news channels went on air with the report.

He had alleged in the morning that the report was "planted" by the External Affairs Ministry and Intelligence Bureau sources.

"They should re-verify that we still have diplomatic relations with all our neighbours," Surjewala had said.

However, later in the day Surjewala had no explanation on why the denial was issued in the morning.

He sought to clarify that his statement that it was fake news was in the context of news channels terming the meeting as "anti-national".

In the afternoon statement Surjewala said: "Nobody should try to sensationalise such normal courtesy calls to term them as events like the 'sources' from the Home Ministry are trying to do."

"Rahul Gandhi as other opposition leaders are fully aware of our national interests and are concerned about the grave situation on the Indo-Chinese border as also the situation arising in Bhutan and Sikkim," he added.

Last week, around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hamburg, Rahul Gandhi had questioned the "silence" of the Prime Minister on the border stand-off. — With agencies