Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today drew flak from Congress after she lashed out at a Karnataka Minister during a press meet on Friday, but her ministry blamed the state minister for the incident, terming his conduct as "unfortunate", and accused him of making personal remarks which were in "bad taste".
Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, visited flood-ravaged Kodagu district in the state to review relief operations by the defence forces. She reacted angrily when Karnataka Minister Sa Ra Mahesh suggested to her to wind up the press interaction as a number of government officials were waiting for a meeting with her.
"I am following a minute-to-minute programme, minister. I do not violate that. If officials are important, my parivaar (family) is also equally important. I follow the minister-in-charge. Central minister follows the minister in-charge here. Unbelievable," she told Mahesh, who was sitting next to her.
"You have a list of minute-to-minute programme for me to follow. If you did have a difference of opinion, you should have sorted it out before," Sitharaman said.
When an official told her that media was recording her comments, she said "Let it get recorded."
It has also been noted that there has been gross misrepresentation with regard to the use of the term parivar' by the defence minister during the press conference, it said
"One of the four departments of the Ministry of Defence is the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare and in that context it was stated that all ex-servicemen are part of the MoD parivar'. Any other inference is misconstrued and uncalled for," it said. PTI MPB