Jindal is prime minister’s friend, nothing ‘secret’ about the meeting, Maryam Nawaz Sharif
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faces another ‘Storm’ over secret meeting with Indian business tycoon Sajjan Jindal, termed as Nawaz-Modi back-door diplomacy.
Sajjan Jindal, an Indian businessman and a mutual friend of Nawaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Modi had a meeting with Pakistan’s PM in his private residence at Murree.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPPP) legislators raised the issue during a meeting of the standing committee on foreign affairs in the national assembly.
According to PTI legislator Shireen Mazari, Jindal only had a visa that allowed travel to Islamabad and Lahore but he was whisked off to Murree in the prime minister’s motorcade for a meeting.
She demanded to know why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had reports of receiving the Indian businessman if he was on a private visit to the country.
Owais Leghari, Who is Chairman of the standing committee told the legislators that, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb had already explained the government’s position on the matter and directed the legislators to focus on items listed on the agenda.
Initially, the government and ruling party kept mum about the meeting, speculation and nothing was officially shared about the context of this meeting.
After private news media broke the story about Prime Minister and Sajjan Jindal meeting at Muree, Prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz, confirm the development on her Twitter account.
According to her Twitter account “Mr Jindal is an old friend of the prime minister. Nothing ‘secret’ about the meeting and it should not be blown out of proportion,” she tweeted.
Jindal’s interaction with premier Nawaz Sharif is being considered something of an extraordinary importance citing the recent developments including death sentence to RAW spy Kalbushan Jadhav and the confessional video of TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan in which he categorically admitted links of the militant group with Indian spy agency RAW.