Jindal may have carried PM’s message to Pakistan

Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 28

Amid the standoff with Pakistan on the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Indian industrialist Sajjan Jindal yesterday met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, leading to speculation about a possible meeting between Sharif and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the near future.

Jindal, the brother of former Congress lawmaker Naveen Jindal, is believed to have close ties with the Sharif family and also enjoys a good equation with Modi. This had enabled him to arrange Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore on the Christmas of 2015. There was no official word, but it is believed that Jindal acted as a conduit for the ice-breaker then.

On Thursday, Jindal met Sharif in the hill town of Murree where the two held an hour-long conversation. Speculation has been rife  that he possibly carried a message for Sharif from Modi. Both leaders are to travel to Astana in June this year for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting where India and Pakistan will be admitted as full members. 

A possible scheduled or a pull-aside meeting between the two leaders to defuse simmering tensions is what is being talked about.    

The Opposition parties in Pakistan are not too amused by Jindal’s visit. Pakistan's Tehreek-i-Insaaf's (PTI) chief whip Shireen Mazari has questioned the authorities as to how Jindal had visited Murree when he had a visa for only Lahore and Islamabad. Opposition leader Mian Mahmood-ur-Rashid tabled a resolution in Pakistan’s Punjab Assembly in this regard.

“The people of Pakistan should be told as to why the premier kept his meeting with Jindal secret,” the resolution read.  

Defending her father, Sharif’s daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif claimed there was nothing “secret” about the meeting. She said Jindal was an “old friend” of the Prime Minister and that the meeting should not be “blown out of proportion”.