INDIA’S FM UNDER FIRE

Sushma Swaraj in Lalit Modi visa controversy, defends action

New Delhi 

Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday defended her decision to help corruption-hit former cricket boss Lalit Modi gain emergency travel papers in Britain, as the opposition demanded her resignation.

Swaraj said she had backed Modi’s request last July for travel documents from the British government on “humanitarian” grounds so that he could accompany his wife who needed surgery for cancer in Portugal. Indian authorities revoked Modi’s Indian passport while he was in the UK in 2010 after he became embroiled in false accounting and other corruption allegations in the multi-million dollar Indian Premier League.

Swaraj said she told Britain’s High Commissioner to India James Bevan along with Indian-origin Labour UK MP Keith Vaz that granting Modi the documents would not harm the nations’ bilateral relations.

“I genuinely believe that in a situation such as this, giving emergency travel documents to an Indian citizen cannot and should not spoil relations between the two countries,” she said in a series of tweets.

According to Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper, Vaz used Swaraj’s name to put pressure on the UK’s top immigration official to grant British travel papers to Modi.

Meanwhile, India’s opposition Congress Party demanded Swaraj resign on moral grounds.