External affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Monday accused Canada of “inconsistent standards” in diplomatic relations.
Speaking at the ‘NDTV World Summit 2024: The India Century’, the minister said,”So apparently, the license that they give themselves is totally different from the kind of restrictions that they impose on diplomats in Canada. When we tell them you have people openly threatening leaders of India, diplomats of India. Their answer is freedom of speech. When Indian journalists make social media comments, if you threaten the Indian High Commissioner, he is supposed to accept it as freedom of speech.”
“But if an Indian journalist says the Canadian High Commissioner walked out of South Block looking very grumpy, it is foreign interference. Even double standards are mild words for it. There is this thing that we will do differently at home. We will do it differently abroad. We will do it our way, but that doesn’t apply to you. I think these are the larger adjustments which have to happen in this changing world,” ANI quoted Jaishankar said.
Jaishankar’s attacks have come at a time when the diplomatic tensions between India and Canada are at an all-time high. Last week, India expelled six Canadian diplomats and recalled its envoy after Ottawa named the Indian high commissioner to the North American country and other diplomats as ‘persons of interest’ in its probe into the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead in Surrey in June last year. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had alleged role of Indian government agents behind the murder of Nijjar.
