Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore on Friday to “wish Nawaz Sharif on his birthday”, has brought Indian industrialist Sajjan Jindal into the limelight, who was also in Pakistan on the same day and tweeted his picture with wife saying he is in Lahore for PM Nawaz’s birthday, a private news channel reported.
According to details, it is not the first time Sajjan Jindal has been associated with Nawaz Sharif, nor is it the first time his name appeared as the facilitator of a meeting between Modi and Sharif. When Nawaz Sharif visited Delhi last May to attend Modi’s inauguration, he accepted an invite from Sajjan Jindal and visited his house with his son.
An Indian journalist Barkha Dutt has claimed in her book “The Unquiet Land” that last November Modi and Nawaz Sharif met ‘secretly’ for an hour in Kathmandu during the SAARC summit. Both the leaders agreed to keep talking informally.
According to Barkha Dutt, the meeting was held in Sajjan Jindal’s hotel room.
The Jindals are second largest steel manufacturers in India and are interested in procuring high quality but cheap iron ore from Afghanistan.