NEW DELHI: In the past six months of his government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken the biggest strides in the field of foreign affairs with the premier taking personal interest in charting a new course for India’s relationship with the world. This has led to speculations that external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj is just a “dummy”.

Brushing aside such assumptions, Union minister Prakash Javdekar on Saturday told a TV channel, “This is a ridiculous assumption. Every minister in our Cabinet is doing his job wonderfully. They are super active. They are working from morning to late nights because we have all been motivated by Modiji's dedication towards his work.”

Power corridors have been abuzz with discussions over the limited influence Swaraj wields in her own ministry and many allege that most important decisions on the foreign affairs front are taken by Prime Minister in consultation with NSA Ajit Doval .

It is important to note that on his first few foreign visits, Modi did not take Swaraj along. In fact, her first visit with Modi came only in September during the Prime Minister’s US visit when she travelled with him from New York to Washington, DC for the summit meeting with US President Barack Obama. Till then, Modi had not found her participation necessary enough and had excluded her during his visits to Brazil and Japan. The only trip in which she accompanied him was to Bhutan. In recent visits to Australia, Myanmar and Fiji, Swaraj was again conspicuous by her absence.

However, a PMO-driven foreign policy is not something unique to Modi’s administration. Even during UPA Manmohan Singh largely influenced foreign policy decisions in consultation with NSA Shivshankar Menon and his foreign ministers did not accompany him on all visits. Sources say, particularly in relation to Pakistan, policy decisions were exclusively in the hands of the PM then. Even Pranab Mukherjee, as foreign minister, rarely accompanied Manmohan Singh on foreign visits although he was also number two in the government and so had to stay back to run it.

Also, not all visits abroad require the foreign minister to accompany PM. In the past, foreign ministers have rarely accompanied PM in G20 and East Asia summits.

Swaraj has, however, travelled to Bangladesh, Nepal (to prepare for PM's trip), Myanmar, Singapore and Vietnam, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Bahrain and Mauritius so far on key standalone meetings and received many of her counterparts since taking charge as external affairs minister on May 26. She also set the tone for Modi's US visit, which is widely expected to improve India-US relations that have soured since 2011, when she met her American counterpart John Kerry in Delhi at the end of July for the bilateral strategic dialogue.

