No senior minister to go to meet Baba Ramdev, government decides

NEW DELHI: Under severe attack over rushing senior ministers to the airport to meet Ramdev, the government is understood to have decided that senior ministers, especially Pranab Mukherjee, will not meet him again for further talks.

Party sources said that Mukherjee will meet Ramdev but it was the turn of the yoga guru and his team to come to him for any negotiations.

The party would not mind ministers like Subodh Kant Sahay, who has good equation with Ramdev, conducting a dialogue, the sources said.

The decision came after serious reservations were expressed by the Congress on yesterday's extraordinary step of holding a dialogue with Ramdev in airport.

The issue was discussed at the Congress Core Group meeting attended by Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and some other leaders this evening.

Senior party leader Digvijay Singh, who has been critical of Ramdev, met Mukherjee tonight and expressed the party's concerns over the issue, the sources said.

The party was so cut up on the issue that none of the spokespersons made any comment on the issue except a brief remark by Abhishek Singhvi who said the government's efforts to reach out to Ramdev should not be seen as a sign of weakness.

"As a responsive and sensitive government, we are engaging constructively to find real and practical solutions in national interest. This should not be mistaken as a sign of weakness or fear," Singhvi said.