PM Modi’s Lahore visit was impromptu: Book

New Delhi, April 12

PM Narendra Modi’s decision to travel to Pakistan from Afghanistan, where he had gone for an official visit, was an impromptu decision that took his entourage with surprise, recalled India’s interlocutor with Pakistan for decades, Satinder Kumar Lambah in his posthumously published book “In Pursuit of Peace” released here today.

Lambah, who devoted 25 years dealing with matters relating to Pakistan, wrote on PM’s stopover in Lahore in the context of how PMs of India had shaped the country’s policy towards Pakistan unlike the case in Islamabad. PM Modi had struck a chord with then Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif when he was invited for the swearing-in ceremony in 2014.

“But Modi’s decision to visit Lahore on December 25, 2015, was not foreseen or known,” he wrote. The PM had visited Moscow and, on his return leg, he visited Kabul on December 25 to inaugurate the new Parliament building.

After a speech at Afghan Parliament, the PM and his entourage started for the long journey to an Afghan leader’s office. It was during this car ride that PM Modi dialled Sharif to wish him on his birthday. When the motorcade reached Afghanistan’s then CEO Abdullah Abdullah’s office, the entourage was informed the PM had decided to go to Pakistan.