China's stand on Masood Azhar in UN a failure of PM's 'jhoola'

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi Thursday attacked Narendra Modi over China blocking a UN Security Council resolution to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, alleging it was a failure of the Prime Minister's "jhoola" (swing) diplomacy.

He also questioned about India reportedly placing orders for bulletproof vests for its Army from China when the latter refused to cooperate in blacklisting Azhar.

"This is a failure of Narendra Modi's 'jhoola' (swing) diplomacy... and this 'jhoola' diplomacy is so fantastic that China refuses to cooperate in blacklisting this terrorist," he told reporters here, apparent reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Modi sitting on a swing in Ahmedabad during his visit to India.

India's bid to designate the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed's chief as a global terrorist suffered a setback with China on Wednesday putting a technical hold on a proposal to ban him following the Pulwama terror attack.

Referring to a report, Owaisi said India had placed an order of nearly Rs 639 crore for bulletproof vests for the army from China.

"Why should the order to purchase bulletproof vests be placed with China when it refuses to cooperate in blacklisting a terrorist?... What is your nationalism? Where is our self-respect go... These are the questions which the nation wants to know from Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he said.

On the MUDRA scheme, he disputed the claims about amount received by the beneficiaries and alleged the NDA government "believes in lies" and did not want empirical data to come out. It had stopped a survey of beneficiaries, he charged.

By stopping the survey, the government had "exposed itself that the whole MUDRA loan scheme is only on paper," the Hyderabad MP said.