Top Kashmiri separatists including pro-Pakistan militant supporters like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik attended the event.
Singh, who was in the party for just a few minutes, didn't appear comfortable while sitting next to Pakistani high commissioner Basit Ali.
After returning, Singh tweeted with the hashtag "DISGUST".
Speaking to Times Now news channel, VK Singh, who is a former Army chief, made it clear that he was representing the government at the function.
He said the Hurriyat Conference had been attending the event for the past about 20 years.
"For the last 20 years, Hurriyat (has been) part of Pakistan National Day (function). Has it happened for the first time?" he asked.
He said the government nominates a person for such events.
READ ALSO: VK Singh expresses 'disgust' after attending Pakistan Day event
"The government nominated a person to attend. There is full stop after that. The government takes (such a decision) for all national days of all embassies (in India)," he said.
"There is diplomatic civility involved in it. Where is the question of questioning such things?" he said.
The minister later said his attending the function was part of "diplomatic civility", and wondered what the brouhaha was about.
When Singh was accosted by reporters on Monday on why he attended an event at which separatist leaders were honoured guests, the minister said he had been asked to do so.
"The government of India has to send an MoS (minister of state). They sent me and I went there and came back," he said.
Congress leader Manish Tewari said leaders have in the past refused to attend Pakistani events.
Tewari tweeted: "If Mr#duty#Disgust is so disgusted with double standards of his government on Pakistan he should quit? Other ministers in the past have refused to attend Pakistan events!"
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a column on the NDTV news website wrote: "The damage done by the tweets has to be seen in the context of what the Modi government seems to be doing on the Indo-Pak front.""It has stretched out a conciliatory hand, sent the foreign secretary to Islamabad, downplayed the terrorist attacks a few days ago in Jammu and Kashmir, and the prime minister used the occasion of Pakistan's National Day yesterday (Monday) to declare his new-found faith in peace and dialogue with our most hostile neighbour," Tharoor wrote.
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"If this is all part of a carefully calibrated opening to Islamabad, the last thing the government of India needs is for one of its own servants, an instrument of its policy, to undercut the policy he is supposed to help execute."
Tharoor wrote that the "tangled" India-Pakistan ties "need to be handled with finesse, subtlety, and yes, sometimes with insincerity. Pakistan is not the right place for a bull who carries his own china shop around with him".
Congress Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar, who also attended the Pakistan Day event, in a column on NDTV news website wrote that the Narendra Modi government was beginning to slowly reach out to Pakistan, despite the ceasefire violations on the border.
"Not only has the new foreign secretary been to Islamabad, Delhi is now beginning to walk the talk on dialogue."
"Instead of sending so graceless a representative, Modi should have ensured that we were more decently represented," he wrote.
(With inputs from IANS)
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