Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar told a parliamentary standing committee on Tuesday as he was bombarded with hard hitting questions from the Congress.

Some of the members asked Jaishankar about the sequence of events that led to Dokalam standoff, whether India has kept its "friends" in the loop, the nature of response from Russia and United States, the increasing influence of China in India's neighbourhood and the perceived worsening of India's relations with its immediate neighbours.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi wanted to know why after years of hard work to build a relationship of mutual respect with China through set mechanisms, things had collapsed. Was that a failure of Indian foreign policy, he asked. According to some members, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi asked the foreign secretary whether the Chinese response was designed to convey to Bhutan that India cannot defend it.

The Foreign Secretary said MEA was trying to resolve the standoff diplomatically through negotiations. He said Ministry of External Affairs was in contact with the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, while New Delhi's Beijing mission is engaged in negotiations with the Chinese Foreign Ministry. He also explained, according to sources that China was asserting its own position, and that India was operating in a fast-changing world. The Foreign Secretary reassured the MPs that everything would be eventually resolved.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Trinamool Congress' Sugata Bose, Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s Mohammad Salim, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sharad Tripathi and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's Kanimozhi were among 20 of the 31 members who attended the meeting.

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