Def ministry says Ktka minister's behaviour unfortunate; Cong slams Sitharaman

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today drew flak from Congress after she lashed out at a Karnataka Minister during a press meet on Friday, but her ministry blamed the state minister for the incident, terming his conduct as "unfortunate", and accused him of making personal remarks which were in "bad taste".

Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, visited flood-ravaged Kodagu district in the state to review relief operations by the defense forces. She reacted angrily when Karnataka Minister Sa Ra Mahesh suggested to her to wind up the press interaction as a number of government officials were waiting for a meeting with her.

"I am following a minute-to-minute programme, minister. I do not violate that. If officials are important, my parivaar (family) is also equally important. I follow the minister-in-charge. Central minister follows the minister in-charge here. Unbelievable," she told Mahesh, who was sitting next to her.

"You have a list of the minute-to-minute programme for me to follow. If you did have a difference of opinion, you should have sorted it out before," Sitharaman said.

When an official told her that media was recording her comments, she said: "Let it get recorded."

In a tweet, Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah today criticised Sitharaman, alleging that she was "more interested in dominating our minister" which reflected BJP's "apathy" towards the state.

The defense ministry issued a clarification today on the incident, questioning the state minister's conduct.

"On completion of the field visits, as per the programme, the defense minister was interacting with ex-servicemen who had been adversely affected by the floods, when the district in-charge minister objected and insisted that meeting with the officials be conducted first," it said.

"The defense minister clarified that welfare of ex-servicemen was an essential part of the ministry and the same was scheduled in the programme. However, the district minister insisted that the defence minister immediately stop the interaction and proceed to the meeting with the officials," the ministry said.

It said Sitharaman immediately halted the meeting and proceeded to the venue of the meeting with the officials.

"The venue was already set up for the press conference and hurriedly the officials were summoned to sit among the media persons for the review. It was unprecedented to hold a meeting with the officials, with all the media persons present," it said.

The ministry said in spite of the district administration finalizing her programme and the minister following the same in its "entirety", it is unfortunate that the Karnataka minister behaved the way he did.

"Subsequently, the personal remarks made against the defense minister were also in bad taste, which does not merit a response," the ministry said.

It has also been noted that there has been gross misrepresentation with regard to the use of the term 'parivar' by the defense minister during the press conference, it said

"One of the four departments of the Ministry of Defence is the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare and in that context, it was stated that all ex-servicemen are part of the MoD 'parivar'. Any other inference is misconstrued and uncalled for," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)