'In reality the Indian Foreign Minister has nothing better to do than get people visas', says Rahul Gandhi in London

Rahul Gandhi launched an attack at External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj as part of a larger broadside against the Modi government while partaking in an interaction at the Institute of Strategic Studies, a research institute and think-tank in London.

After his twin interactions in Germany, in Hamburg and Berlin, where he had made highly-discussed remarks seemingly justifying the creation of ISIS, the Congress president focused once again on China, remarking on how it can't be ignored and that India has a history with its neighbour, just like how it shares strong bonds with Europe and the US. 

Possibly in an effort to make his vision for India, i.e. that it would play a balancing role between two powers US and China, sound more thought through, he again emphasised that India shares a number of ideals with the US, such as Freedom of Expression, and also has its own ideas, like non violence. He said that India specialises in reducing confrontation, but married that by saying, as he had done in Hamburg, that at the end, India would act in its self-interest. 

Speaking about the Doklam dispute between India, China and Bhutan, Rahul Gandhi said: 

"Doklam is not an unrelated episode. It is not a border issue. It is a strategic issue. Doklam was a crisis because the government and the Prime Minister view things from an event perspective. Doklam is a point in process"

He continued with an attack on the Ministry of External Affairs, targeting Sushma Swaraj directly over her numerous interventions regarding citizens' requests on visa and passport issues. He said: 

"The reason why MEA is small is not because it does not have resources, but because it is run by a monopoly. If you bring in new think tanks and give them power, it will scale immediately. Everybody says that it is a great thing that India's Foreign Minister spends a lot of time working on visas... In the Indian press, they love it. But in reality the Indian Foreign Minister has nothing better to do than get people visas... Sushma Swaraj has nothing to do."

During his address, Rahul Gandhi also commented on Pakistan and its the newly-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan saying,

"I don't think a solution is ready. Pakistan spends a lot of time trying to make Afghanistan unstable. What happened with Atal Bihari Vajpayee is a classic example... He went there in good faith... But the army was doing something else.  It is a huge commitment of political will. The question of Pakistan is who do you talk to in Pakistan? Pakistan from our perspective is a number of institutions."