Who drafted Sharm-al-Sheikh statement, CIC asks ministry
By IANSMonday, January 18, 2010
NEW DELHI - The Central Information Commission has asked the external affairs ministry for the files on the India-Pakistan joint statement, issued after the meeting at Sharm-al-Sheikh.
The petitioner, S. C. Agrawal in a right to information application, had asked for the copy of the joint statement and the names of the officials involved in framing the statement.
But the ministry had refused the direction of the information commissioner to disclose the names and file-noting to the petitioner in December 2008.
Following this refusal, the CIC directed the ministry to release to the petitioner the files related to the joint statement.
The July 16, 2008, statement was issued after a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani at the Egyptian sea-side resort, on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Summit.
It had been criticised for delinking the issue of the resumption of dialogue from Pakistan doing enough to catch the masterminds of the Mumbai terror attacks, as well as to dismantle the entire terror infrastructure.
Also, Indian opposition parties were strongly opposed to the joint statement, as it also mentioned Balochistan. Pakistan claimed then that India was involved in the fomenting unrest in Balochistan, which has been denied strongly by the South Asian giant.
In a bid to defend the government from the barrage of opposition, the then foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said that the only cricitism possible against the joint statement was that of “bad drafting”.
