Sparks fly over Sajjan Jindal’s Murree meeting with Nawaz Sharif 

The day after Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh revealed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given the green signal to supply surplus power to Pakistan, industrialist Sajjan Jindal flew into Islamabad for a ‘secret’ meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, reported Pakistan’s media on both Thursday and Friday. Both Sajjan Jindal and the Nawaz Sharif family have interests in steel and energy.

While the Foreign Office of Pakistan and the External Affairs Ministry in India denied any knowledge of the meeting or Jindal’s agenda, the Pakistan Prime Minister’s daughter tweeted that there was nothing secret about the meeting as Sajjan Jindal has been an old family friend of the family.

Eyebrows were, however, raised because Jindal and the small delegation accompanying him were transported to Nawaz Sharif’s private residence at Murree for the meeting. While the Pakistan Prime Minister is said to spend his weekends at Lahore or Murree, his visit to Murree on a working day set the Pakistani media abuzz about a possible Track II diplomacy. Some speculated that the industrialist could be carrying a message from Prime Minister Modi to Nawaz Sharif.

Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported, “… Mr Jindal and his delegation arrived at Benazir Bhutto International Airport on Wednesday morning, where they were received by the PM’s son Hussain Nawaz and Maryam Nawaz’s son-in-law, Raheel Munir.”

The Dawn noted that Jindal was also present in Lahore the day Prime Minister Modi flew in unannounced in December 2015 and was a guest at the wedding of Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter. It quoted Indian journalist Barkha Dutt who recorded in her book, “When Sharif was in Delhi, Jindal hosted a tea party for the Pakistani premier right after his meeting with Modi. It attracted little attention in the Indian media but in Pakistan, Sharif drew flak for finding time for Jindal and not for Kashmiri separatists,” she wrote.

Pakistani newspaper Express Tribune quoted private TV channels as reporting that Jindal was accompanied by Virender Singh and Bubbar Saket Singal.

The newspaper also reported that Pakistan’s Opposition parties have taken notice of the meeting and PPP leader Sherry Rahman had moved an adjournment motion in Pakistan’s Senate for a discussion on the meeting.

It reported Rahman as saying, “Given that this is yet another meeting held at a high level without the knowledge of the FO, it is high time that the people of Pakistan are taken into confidence about what transpires in such meetings.”

“Analysts are not only casting aspersions on the motives of the meeting, but its timing as well given that it took place when both are entangled in multiple bilateral issues. The most recent of these was India’s reaction to the death sentence of Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav,” it went on to add.

News website thewire.in weighed in with a report that suggested that the news about the visit was ‘leaked’ by Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Army which may have sought to embarrass Nawaz Sharif. It noted that the day Jindal flew into Pakistan for the luncheon meeting, Pakistan also released the confessional statement of a Pakistani terrorist who claimed that Pakistani Taliban was propped up by India’s external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W).