Shakeel Ahmed meets Sonia, PM

Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed, who is in the eye of a storm over his controversial tweet, had a meeting with party chief Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today.
Refuting reports that he was summoned by the party leadership over the tweet controversy, Ahmed claimed "not a single word about it was discussed" in the meeting.
"It was all related to states like Punjab, Haryana and Delhi for which I am responsible as the AICC general secretary in-charge. Besides being from Bihar I also gave them my assessment about the political situation there," he said.
Sources close to the Congress general secretary said that he had already sought appointments from Gandhi and Singh four days before he tweeted on July 21.

His appointment with the Prime Minister was earlier fixed in the morning on July 22 but since he was reaching Delhi late that day, he had requested for a rescheduling of the appointment and he was given time this morning an hour after he met Gandhi.
While Ahmed's meeting with Gandhi was brief, he had half an hour long chat with the Prime Minister.

Sources said that immediately after party spokesperson Renuka Chowdhary had distanced the party from his tweet, Ahmed had lodged a protest with Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi saying that he quoted only from the NIA's charge sheet and did not make any statement regarding the link of Gujarat 2002 riots with the creation of terror outfit Indian Mujahideen.

Today's AICC briefing saw the party making some amends with Congress spokesperson Raj Babbar hailing Ahmed as a man of "depth" and asked people to look at the statement of such a leader in totality.
"Shakeel Ahmed is man of depth. He is a very serious person. If a serious person like him says something, it should be seen in its totality," Babbar said, adding that Ahmed has already explained his remarks and there was no need for the party to add anything more on it.