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Ahmedabad:
After springing surprise by sharing stage with controversial
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at his election rally in
December, cricketer Irfan Pathan
met him on Friday and invited him for the wedding of his elder
brother and cricketer Yusuf Pathan.
The wedding is slated to be held in Mumbai on March 27.
Yusuf is getting married to physiotherapist Afreen,
who works in Vadodara while her parents live in Mumbai.
Officials in CMO said
Modi, who had so far avoided attending wedding of cricketers, was
willing to attend Yusuf's wedding.
Irfan Pathan had surprised the political observers in December
2012 by sharing the stage with Narendra Modi in the campaign rally of BJP
in the run up to the assembly elections.
Congress leader and union minister Salman Khurshid termed Modi has
termed the incident as "pulling rabbits out of the hat".
“As an observer of the election
process, I am a little bit surprised that he (Modi) is having to
pull rabbits, seemingly so many live or dead rabbits out of the
hat”, Khurshid said.
The BJP however was elated to see Irfan on its side.
“If he (Irfan Pathan) decides to join Narendra Modi because of his
record of governance, I am surprised why should Congress take an
objection to it,” said BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad.
He said Pathan, besides being an eminent cricketer, is also a
well-known Gujarati.
A vast majority of people in India
and the world see Narendra Modi as the one who had "engineered"
the 2002 Gujarat riots. More than 2000 people were killed in one
of the deadliest riots India had seen.
Modi received widespread flak from
different quarters including from his own partymen. In a strongest
message, the US government banned Modi from entering the United
States.
Recently, an invitation to him to
address Wharton Debate via video-conferencing was also cancelled
in the last movement after scholars, academicians and students
criticised the move in the wake if his role during the 2002
Gujarat riots.
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