Washington: “Why don’t you give Shah Rukh Khan a diplomatic passport?” an American diplomat who met an Indian official socially during the weekend asked as their conversation inevitably veered towards the actor’s inconvenience at White Plains airport in New York on Thursday. “That will solve the problem for us the next time he travels to the United States.”
The Indian official was a little offended because he thought the American was being his usual smart Alec, but the latter insisted he was serious. “After all, you have given Ratan Tata a diplomatic passport. He always travels with the red passport,” the American continued.
As it happened, the Indian did not know that Tata had been given a diplomatic passport by New Delhi. This official had been away continuously on foreign postings for more than a decade and had not kept close track of such developments back home.
The American told him that he had once travelled first class with the industrialist, he had seen Tata’s diplomatic passport and when they both alighted at New York, Tata went to the special immigration enclosure for diplomatic passport-holders .
When S.M. Krishna became external affairs minister in May 2009, one of his earliest discretionary decisions was to issue a diplomatic passport to Tata, recognising his emergence as a global investor and industrialist who has to travel extensively worldwide, some of those trips on behalf of the government or representing his country.
15/04/12 KP Nayar/The Telegraph
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