New Delhi, Sep 23 (IANS): Describing the sloganeering by Prime MInister Narendra Modi in favour of US President Donald Trump in Houston as a violation of India's foreign policy, the Congress said that it could have been avoided.
"We have a strategic partnership between India and the US, which is bi-partisan, which we fully endorse," senior Congress leader Anand Sharma told reporters here.
He said: "There is a honoured convention on India's foreign policy that when we engage with foreign governments, the President of India or the Prime Minister are on their soil we do not take part in their domestic electoral politics."
Sharma said, the Prime Minister should have "avoided" that. "We have seen that India is taking positions or sides. And the Prime Minister using that moment to exhort and raising that slogan on 'Abki Bar Trump Sarkar' was better avoided," he said.
His remarks came a day after Modi during his address to a crowd of over 50,000 in Houston cheered for Trump.
"The words of President Trump, 'Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkar', rang loud and clear," said Modi, pausing strategically, after saying "Abki Baar Trump Sarkar".
The Congress Rajya Sabha MP pointed out that in the past India has engaged with both the Republican and the Democratic administrations in the US.
He said in 2008, it was a Republican administration under President George W. Bush, and our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "And we had successfully signed the historic Indo-US nuclear deal. And when the Presidential elections came, Manmohan Singh did not take partisan position to support or endorse the Republicans," he said.
"And after elections President Barack Obama took over as US President and we took forward that engagement with Democratic President as we had done during the Republican President," he added.