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New Delhi: Responding to a former Japanese minister’s remarks blaming India for what he called the “failure” of the Shinkansen-linked Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail (MAHSR) project to move forward, New Delhi has called the ex-official’s view his “individual opinion” that is “at considerable variance with facts”.

Hideki Makihara, a former cabinet minister who belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party that is currently the senior member in Japan’s ruling coalition, had said on X that India is entirely to blame for the “failure of this project to progress”.

“For the sake of the reputation of all the Japanese personnel who worked so hard on this, I must state that the failure of this project to progress is 100% the fault of the Indian side,” Makihara, who said he was involved with the majority Japanese-funded MAHSR at one point, wrote.

Asked about his remarks, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Friday (July 17) stated that talks between India and Japan on MAHSR “are in fact progressing well” and the former minister’s........

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