Foreign Secretary Misri briefs parliamentary panel on India-Canada tensions: Report

The Union government has briefed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs on the ongoing tensions between India and Canada, according to a report.

While India-Canada relations had been tense for a long time, the relationship imploded earlier this month when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went after Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma and other diplomats. India withdrew Verma and other senior diplomats and Canada and expelled senior Canadian diplomats posted in India, including the Canadian chargé d’affaires.

Following demands by Congress and other Opposition parties for a briefing on the matter, Foreign Secretary Misri on Friday (October 25) briefed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, according to India Today.

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Sources told the news channel that Misri shared some details about the tensions with the committee but said that more details will be shared at a later data as the matter remains very sensitive.

Besides the India-Canada tensions, the news channel quoted sources as saying that the committee was also briefed about the ongoing conflict in West Asia, the India-China agreement over disengagement in Ladakh, and the issue of Indians stuck in the Russia-Ukraine War.

Earlier this month, Canada declared Verma and other Indian diplomats ‘persons of interest’ in the case of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s death. This followed an unprecedentedly sharp statement from India slamming Trudeau for political agenda “cantered around vote bank politics”. Last year, Trudeau had accused India of being involved in Nijjar’s killing, saying that “Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar”.

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Earlier this month, Trudeau not only went after Indian diplomats but accused India of running a full-scale espionage and criminal network inside Canada.

Shortly after he made these allegations, Trudeau told a Canadian government commission that he had no evidence to support any allegation against India. He said that his claims were based on intelligence and not “evidentiary proof”. India has maintained from day one that Canada has not shared evidence with India.

In a statement earlier this month after Canada went after Indian diplomats, India said that the Trudeau government “has not shared a shred of evidence with the Government of India despite many requests from our side”.

The statement added, “This latest step follows interactions that have again witnessed assertions without any facts. This leaves little doubt that on the pretext of an investigation, there is a deliberate strategy of smearing India for political gains.”

The statement further said that the series of events over the past seven years under Trudeau’s government does nothing but serves the “anti-India separatist agenda that the Trudeau Government has constantly pandered to for narrow political gains”.

While Canada had long been a safe haven for the Khalistan movement, the secessionist movement seeking to carve out a Sikh state out of India, the movement found a newfound state patronage after Trudeau came to power in 2015. Khalistani terrorists and organised crime syndicates have set shops in Canada to operate against India under his watch. This has been the reason for sour India-Canada ties for years.