Trinamool moves privilege motion against External Affairs Minister 

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. File
| Photo Credit: ANI

Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose on Friday (February 28, 2025) moved a privilege motion against External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar for allegedly giving “misleading and incomplete” information regarding the deportation of Indians from the U.S..

She said that despite the Minister’s assurance that the deportees would not be mistreated, the batch that arrived on February 16 too was shackled. 

In a letter to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar, Ms. Ghose quoted from a statement Mr. Jaishankar made in the Upper House on February 6, which reportedly said: “We are, of course, engaging the U.S. government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight.”

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Nine days after the Minister’s statement, Ms. Ghose pointed out that 116 deportees who were sent back on a second flight were once again handcuffed and shackled. “These deportees have provided disturbing testimonies of mistreatment, which contradict the assurances given by the Minister in the House,” she said, citing the example of an individual who was forced to “remove his turban, which was then thrown into a dustbin”. Calling it a “deeply offensive act against Sikh religious sentiments and rights”, she further claimed that the deportees were tortured and fed inadequate food, some of which was “half-cooked”.

Testimonies from the February 16 deportees, Ms. Ghose said, strongly indicated a deterioration in treatment, including extended periods of restraint, confiscation of religious symbols, and lack of proper food. 

“Given the serious discrepancies between the Minister’s statement and the first-hand accounts of deportees, I request that this matter be referred to the Committee of Privileges,” Ms. Ghose said in her letter.