The Indian government asked all US consular officers to turn in their identity cards and the entire American diplomatic corps their airport passes while senior Congress leaders snubbed a visiting US Congressional delegation for the second straight day by refusing to meet it.
The Indian government also ordered the Delhi Police to remove concrete barricades on public land and roads that have existed for years around the US embassy.
The approach of the arrest of Indian diplomat on Tuesday has set off a trigger for which a diplomatic pandemonium has started with retaliatory steps taken against the US diplomats based across the country, reports The Hindu.
Key information such as salaries paid to all Indian staff employed at the consulates and by Consulate officers and families including as domestic helps has also been sought by the government apart from visa and other details of all teachers in US schools and pay and bank accounts of Indians in these schools.
Government has also stopped all import clearances including for liquor for the US embassy.
The government’s action was backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which urged the Centre to “match each and every step of the US, to take serious action in this matter to establish Indian sovereignty and prestige of its diplomatic community.’’ Talking to news personnel, BJP leader Ravishankar Prasad also took a dig at the government by saying the US’ actions do “not accord to the level of friendship that the Indian government claims to have with the US’’.
“We will deal with them exactly the same way they are dealing with us. Not anything more, not anything less. While the US doesn’t provide many courtesies to our diplomats, we go out of the way not to withhold those facilities. If they are downgrading what we are entitled to as diplomats, they will also get the same treatment. This way we will both be going strictly by the rules,’’ said an Indian diplomat encapsulating the method behind the day’s activity.
“We have put in motion what we believe is an effective way to address this issue, protect her dignity. We have communicated the essence we feel in diplomatic terms and also due to the human element,’’ said External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.
After Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar refused to meet the five US Congressmen on Monday, Congress vice- president Rahul Gandhi and Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde declined to meet them on Tuesday in protest against handcuffing and strip search of diplomat Devyani Khobragade over a contractual issue with her help.
BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi also tweeted saying he had declined to meet the Congressmen in solidarity with the diplomat.
These “reciprocal steps” would “convey a clear message that this kind of treatment of a diplomat is unacceptable,’’ said government sources handling the dispute. The former External Affairs Minister and BJP leader, Yashwant Sinha, called on the government to expel all gay partners of US diplomats.
Dr. Khobragade was arrested last Thursday.