PM joins MPs for surprise lunch

New Delhi, February 9

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday caught fellow parliamentarians by surprise when he joined them for lunch at the Parliament canteen.

“I am going to punish you today, come with me,” the Prime Minister told the group of MPs that included Revolutionary Socialist Party’s NK Premchandran (from Kerala’s Kollam); Ram Mohan Naidu (Telugu Desam Party); Ritesh Pandey (Bahujan Samaj Party); Jamyang Namgyal, L Murugan and Heena Gavit (Bharatiya Janata Party) and Sasmit Patra (Biju Janata Dal).

The lunch lasted 45 minutes with the Prime Minister speaking about his famous pit stop at Lahore for Nawaz Sharif’s birthday and Nawaz hoping to return to power in Pakistan now; the first Hindu temple opening in Abu Dhabi next week; his engagement with the Statue of Unity project in Gujarat and his foreign trips. “We did not feel like we were sitting with a PM,” one MP said.