Ex-envoy Puri joins BJP ahead of LS elections

Former Home Secretary RK Singh had become member of the party last month

India’s former UNPR or United Nations Permanent Representative, Hardeep Puri, on Thursday, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the second senior bureaucrat to join the party recently. Home Secretary R K Singh had become a member of the BJP last month.

It is not yet clear whether Puri would contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections but he could be another candidate on the long list of those aiming to become the National Security Advisor (NSA), should the BJP come to power.

A K Doval, who headed India’s security agency, the Intelligence Bureau, tops the list. He currently runs a think tank that also has Prabhat Shukla, former Indian ambassador to Singapore.

Doval was at the forefront of a signature campaign initiative that called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not to meet or hold talks with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in New York last year, on the grounds that it would be wrong to do so when Indian soldiers were being decapitated and killed on the Line of Control.

Others who signed the statement were former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, former secretaries in the external affairs ministry Vivek Katju  and Rajiv Sikri, and former Indian ambassador to Pakistan, Satish Chandra.

While not all of them are members of the BJP, they are critical of the Congress-led government’s handling of foreign policy. In a recent interview to a television channel, Puri had criticised the Prime Minister’s Office’s handling of the Devyani Khobragade affair. In his stellar career, Puri has become known as a brilliant trade negotiator and an acolyte of the flamboyant former foreign secretary and NSA, J N ‘Mani’ Dixit from the time Dixit was in Sri Lanka as ambassador and Puri was posted in Colombo.