No senior minister to go to meet Ramdev, govt decides

New Delhi, Jun 2 (PTI) Under severe attack over rushing
senior ministers to the airport to meet Ramdev, the government
is understood to have decided that senior ministers,
especially Pranab Mukherjee, will not meet him again for
further talks.
Party sources said that Mukherjee will meet Ramdev but
it was the turn of the yoga guru and his team to come to him
for any negotiations.
The party would not mind ministers like Subodh Kant
Sahay, who has good equation with Ramdev, conducting a
dialogue, the sources said.
The decision came after serious reservations were
expressed by the Congress on Wednesday's extraordinary step of
holding a dialogue with Ramdev in airport.
The issue was discussed at the Congress Core Group
meeting attended by Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and some other leaders this evening.
Senior party leader Digvijay Singh, who has been
critical of Ramdev, met Mukherjee Thursday and expressed the
party's concerns over the issue, the sources said.
The party was so cut up on the issue that none of the
spokespersons made any comment on the issue except a brief
remark by Abhishek Singhvi who said the government's efforts
to reach out to Ramdev should not be seen as a sign of
weakness.
"As a responsive and sensitive government, we are
engaging constructively to find real and practical solutions
in national interest. This should not be mistaken as a sign of
weakness or fear," Singhvi said.

A senior minister conceded that the government's
overdrive yesterday was a "weak symbolism" though the
government itself was not weak.
Though there were some reservations about the ministers
going to the airport, it was conveyed that it was a decision
of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs that such a move
be undertaken, the minister said.