‘It Had Not Crossed My Mind…’: Jaishankar on PM Modi’s Phone Call Over His Cabinet Induction

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who worked as a bureaucrat for several years, on Tuesday said the political opportunity in 2019, when he was appointed the EAM, was a “bolt from the blue”.

In an interview with ANI, Jaishankar, who was a Foreign Secretary from January 2015 to January 2018 and earlier served in key ambassadorial positions including in China and the United States, said he got a call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019 inviting him to be a part of his cabinet.

“It had not crossed my mind, I don’t think it had crossed the mind of anybody else in my circle… Once I entered, I must say in all honesty I myself was very unsure. I had watched politicians all my life. One of the things you get to do in foreign service by the way is you actually perhaps much more than the other services is, you see politicians up close because you see them abroad, you are kind of working with them closely, counselling them. So, it’s one thing to watch but to actually join politics, to become a cabinet member, to stand for Rajya Sabha, you know when I was selected, I was not even a member of Parliament. So each of these things happened one by one. I slid into it, sometimes without knowing it. You learn by watching others,” he added.

Jaishankar also said that his father Dr K Subrahmanyam was removed as Secretary, Defence Production, by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi soon after she came back to power in 1980 and he was superseded during the Rajiv Gandhi period with someone junior to him becoming the Cabinet Secretary.

Highlighting the difference between operating as a foreign service officer and as a minister and a politician, Jaishankar said every major issue has some political angle which a minister will tend to see much faster than a bureaucrat.

Jaishankar said he had a choice to join a political party or not when he became a minister.” When I was selected as a minister, I was not a Member of Parliament, I was not a member of a political party either. I had the choice of whether I would join a political party or not. There was no compulsion on it, nobody brought up that subject. It was something that was left to me. I joined because, one, when you are joining a team, you join it wholeheartedly.”

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