Devyani Khobragade offers her respect at a memorial to freedom fighter B R Ambedkar in Mumbai on Tuesday
With Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade back in country, the US embassy in Delhi is trying to get back the privileges it lost as part of India's retaliatory measures.
However, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is in no mood to oblige the Americans.
Delhi is thoroughly miffed with Devyani's indictment by a US grand jury and is unlikely to budge unless charges are dropped against the diplomat in a visa fraud case.
Sources told Mail Today that the US embassy has sought a meeting with the MEA officials to seek restoration of airport passes for its diplomats, besides a review of the government directive to shut down American Club.
However, the MEA is still waiting for a detailed reply from the US embassy about the salaries it pays to Indian staffers. MEA has also asked the Indian mission in Washington D.C. to list the privileges accorded to it by the US. India will use the ' reciprocity' test to decide the privileges to American diplomats. "The Americans will be told that reciprocity will be the norm now. We will also remind them to furnish the information we had wanted about the American Club and school," a source told Mail Today. As part of reciprocity, India recently asked US diplomat Wayne May to leave the country.
May was reportedly instrumental in getting maid Sangeeta Richards's family ' evacuated' from India to the US. It was because of Richards's allegation of underpayment and harassment that Devyani was charged with visa fraud, and arrested in New York.
Meanwhile, a different kind of trouble seems to be brewing, with diplomats of other foreign countries in Delhi asking for similar privileges that were once accorded to the US diplomats.
However, it is unlikely that the MEA will open up a Pandora's Box. So far there have been just murmurs.
But on Tuesday when the Republican Party (Athavale) activists welcomed diplomat Devyani Khobragade in Mumbai, the buzz grew stronger that her father Uttam Khobragade is exploiting the spat with US for his political ambitions.
What added to speculation was Devyani's conduct.Not only she allowed to be garlanded by cadres of a political outfit, the 39- yearold diplomat also wore the RPI stole they gave her.
Later, the daughter-father duo visited Chaitya Bhoomi in Dadar to pay respects to Dalit leader Babasaheb Ambedkar in whose memory a memorial has been constructed there.
A Congress leader said: "When Uttam Khobragade was questioned by journalists about her daughter's flat in the scam- tainted Adarsh housing society, he had accused the scribes of being casteists. Now look what he is doing himself." Devyani's father, however, claimed that there was nothing wrong in her daughter accepting the stole. " Some people are creating needless controversy without appreciating my daughter's fight with the US. There was too much crowd today and we didn't know who was giving what," Khobragade said.
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