Shivraj Patil

New Delhi, Dec. 18 (PTI): After 26/11, the US had described then home minister Shivraj Patil as “spectacularly inept” and felt his removal was inevitable despite the protection he enjoyed from Sonia Gandhi, a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks shows.

The US cable, signed by then ambassador David Mulford, speculated that the Mumbai attacks could cost the Congress in the May 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

It said Sonia had “protected” Shivraj despite the minister having been “asleep on the watch” during almost every terror attack or communal eruption.

“Each time there have been calls for his ouster but Sonia Gandhi has protected him. The public’s reaction to the Mumbai incidents has been such that even she could not save him this time.”

Mulford said the Congress was in “deep political trouble” over its handling of the November 2008 attacks and was “desperately seeking to limit the damage”.

“In this environment, removal of the home minister was inevitable. He has over the last four years proved himself to be spectacularly inept.”

The cable, posted in British newspaper The Guardian, said the firing of Patil and other changes were “all intended” to convince the public that the UPA had taken the Mumbai attacks seriously.

“It may be too little too late, however, for the Congress party to reverse its fortunes before May 2009,” the cable said.

Mulford, however, was not sure whether top civil servants would be sacked. He observed: “The discipline and culture of Indian bureaucracy is such that if these men stay on, they will continue to wield power and would not be treated as damaged goods by the rest of the government.”

He noted that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have to “balance the pressure for heads to roll with the fact that getting rid of NSA (national security adviser M.K.) Narayanan, home secretary (Madhukar) Gupta and Intelligence Bureau chief (P.C.) Haldar would mean he will be left with a completely new intelligence team that will take time to settle in, not an attractive prospect to govern within the last few months of his term”.

The cable spoke of a possible “political shakeout” in Maharashtra and said an “active faction” in the state Congress had long been plotting to oust the then chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh.

It noted the “scathing media ridicule” of state home minister R.R. Patil when he played down the attacks saying this sort of incident happened from time to time in big cities.

Pak praise

Another leaked US cable said a Pakistan high commission official in Delhi had praised India for acting “responsibly and maturely” after 26/11.

The official, whose name was deleted in the confidential cable, “praised the Indian government for acting ‘more responsibly and maturely’ than it did after the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul”.

The cable, signed by Mulford, spoke of the media demands for retaliatory action against terror camps in Pakistan.

It quoted the Pakistani official as saying New Delhi’s reaction to the Kabul bombing was “impulsive and politically motivated when it immediately pinned blame on... the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)”.

According to the official, the Indian media’s portrayal of how 26/11 would “negatively affect the bilateral relationship will fizzle out over the next few months”, said the cable, dated December 1, 2008.

The US embassy’s concluding comment was: “No military confrontation anticipated.”