The Congress party is likely to spoil the party of prime minister Manmohan Singh, who wants his favourite diplomat S Jaishankar to take over as the next foreign secretary, when the incumbent Ranjan Mathai demits office in July. Citing WikiLeaks disclosures that show Jaishankar’s close proximity with Americans, an influential group of Congress leaders want the prime minister as well as Congress president Sonia Gandhi to reconsider the choice. Even though governments across the globe have trashed the WikiLeaks cable disclosures, these leaders are out to queer the pitch for an affable and suave Jaishankar, pitted against Sujata Singh, who also has an illustrious record and is senior to him.While Jaishankar is India’s ambassador to China, Sujata Singh is currently heading the Indian mission  in Germany and at the Conference on Disarmament conference in Geneva. Jaishankar is son of the late K Subrahmanyam, the well-regarded strategic and security affairs expert who has enjoyed a close personal rapport with Singh. In fact, this is said to have tilted the scales in favour of Jaishankar’s posting to China in 2009. Sujata is the daughter of former IB chief and current UP governor TV Rajeshwar. Both are Tamils. Sujata has an unblemished record of distinguished service, whereas Jaishankar, according to the Congress leaders, has blotted his copybook with his pro-American bias. With the US on its way out of Afghanistan and the consequent need for India to focus on strengthening relationships with neighbours, Jaishankar’s record, sources in Congress say, can he held against him.As head of the Americas division in the ministry of external affairs from 2004 to 2007, when the nuclear deal was taking shape, Jaishankar’s name figures prominently in a number of US diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks in different contexts. In a cable dated April 25, 2005 (31383), Delhi Charge d’Affaires Robert O Blake, Jr writes that “Jaishankar called the US embassy to make sure they had noticed” the GOI’s vote (against the Cuba-sponsored UNHRC resolution condemning US practices at Guantanamo).  In another cable dated December19, 2005 (05NEWDELHI9514) written prior to the departure of the then Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran to Washington on an official visit, Blake informs the state department of India’s ‘game plan’ during meetings, as “revealed” to him by Jaishankar. The most damning revelation of Dr Jaishankar’s apparently ‘cushy’ relationship with the Americans is the WikiLeaks disclosure of a cable sent in February 2010 by the US ambassador to Beijing, Jon Huntsman, informing the state department that Indian ambassador Jaishankar had sought “closer co-operation with the US” to curb “China’s aggressive approach” to neighbouring countries.In another cable dated April 25, 2005 (with regard to the resolution on Guantanamo Bay) US diplomat Robert O Blake Jr wrote: “Jaishankar argued, India has associated itself with a group composed mainly of NATO allies and other close partners like Japan and Australia, unlike other South Asian countries such as Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka that had abstained in the vote Jaishankar also believed to have passed on a Indian non-paper seeking a US non-objection for the Indian launch of a Thai earth observation satellite containing US scientific components.”Know the manDr S Jaishankar, the Indian ambassador to China, joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977.  He was under secretary (Americas), and later headed the America division of the ministry of external affairs. From 1985 to 1988, he served as first secretary handling political affairs in the embassy in Washington. He was the press secretary of the President of India from 1994 to 1995. Before his posting in Beijing, he was the Indian high commissioner to Singapore from 2007 to 2009.  Jaishankar has done MA in political science PhD in International Relations. 

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