New Delhi: Congress on Wednesday disapproved of the government's unprecedented step of sending four senior ministers to the airport to receive yoga guru Baba Ramdev in a bid to persuade him not to go ahead with the protest from June 4 saying it was "unnecessary".
"The party is not at all related to this entire exercise of sending the ministers to the airport to meet the Yoga Guru. We were not consulted. Was an yoga camp going on there?" highly-placed sources in Congress said, reflecting the disconnect between the government and the party over the issue.
They said talks with Ramdev were fine but there was no need to send the ministers to the airport to meet him.
The sources also suggested that Congress President Sonia Gandhi was not in the loop over the decision. "The party has nothing to do with it", they said.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, accompanied by Kapil Sibal, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Subodh Kant Sahay, held talks with Ramdev for over two hours at the airport when he arrived by a chartered jet from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh this afternoon.
Party General Secretary Digvijay Singh said "we are also interested in the issue of corruption and black money but hunger strike won't check corruption or help bring back black money. He (Baba Ramdev) should agree to the request made by the Prime Minister and other ministers and give up his rigid stand."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already gone the extra mile to urge Ramdev not to go ahead with his hunger strike, promising him to find a "practical and pragmatic" solution to tackle the issue of corruption.
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