Several senior members of the Maurya Sheraton hotel staff today bid goodbye to their families for the next four days. Around 25 persons – essential staff – will be locked in and spend Diwali with the US Secret Service, as the Maurya gets ready to welcome US President Barack Obama.
Security systems – preparations for which began more than two months earlier – are in place for the visit. All 440 rooms in the hotel, which has hosted former Presidents Bush and Clinton, have been reserved. Obama himself will stay at the presidential floor, which includes a library and a 12-seater dining room. The US Secret Service has taken over the hotel, using its own guard dogs, its own fleet of vehicles (because they are all right-hand-drive) and its own satellite communication equipment. Every fire escape, every water hydrant, has been checked, says the staff.
The essential staff that is staying to supervise functions has had to go through deep, thorough checks -- not only of our Intelligence Bureau but also the Secret Service. A staffer denied a US visa in the past has been told to stay out of the detail – her services will not be required during the visit, she’s been told. All addresses have been cross-checked by the Secret Services – including at the ‘native places’ of the staff, as far away as Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
The Delhi Police-generated photo identification card is not sufficient to enable entry. The Secret Service has generated its own lapel pins – each a different colour, allowing access to different floors. In the President’s own detail, a person mandated to guard one floor cannot go to any other part of the hotel.
So, while there may have been gatecrashers at the White House reception for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, there is supposed to be zero chance that Maurya Sheraton will see any gatecrashers till 9 am on the coming Tuesday, November 9, when the President departs.
Obama gets Khurshid as escort
Minority and corporate affairs minister Salman Khurshid will be minister-in-waiting to US President Obama, who arrives in India on Saturday.
A minister-in-waiting is the interlocutor between India and a privileged foreign guest. Then minister of state for external affairs, the late Digvijay Singh, had this office for Bill Clinton’s visit in 2000. Then minister of state for science and technology, Kapil Sibal, did so for President George Bush when he visited India in 2006. Khurshid scored over others not just for his understanding of protocol (he was minister of state for external affairs) but also because he is widely travelled and educated – he trained and practised law at the Inner Temple, England.
