Ruckus In Parliament Over Meeting Between Ramdev’s Aide And Hafiz Saeed

The meeting between 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed and freelance journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik, who is close to yoga guru Baba Ramdev, caused a massive uproar in the Parliament. The protests forced the house to be adjourned twice.

Congress leaders attacked the government on the issue. In the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma questioned why Vaidik had claimed to be an emissary. "Who sent him on the mission?" asked Azad, who is the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
The BJP said it had nothing to do with Vaidik's meeting with Hafiz Saeed. The meeting between the two took place on July 2. "The government has nothing to do with any journalist's activity in his individual capacity," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha.

As a photograph of that meeting circulated on social media, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh tweeted, "Ved Pratap Vedik meets Hafiz Saeed. Any reaction on Social Media? Did he go as an Envoy of NDA Govt or as a personal Envoy of PM?"

Vaidik said, "There is no question of my being an envoy. I have never been a special envoy for any PM, I am my own envoy."

He said he met Saeed as "a journalist must meet all kinds of people. For a journalist, no one is untouchable. I wanted to prove him wrong and influence his thinking."

Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, is accused of plotting a number of attacks in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.