Perhaps for the first time
ever, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress chief Sonia
Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Vadra and her son-in-law Robert Vadra came
together under one roof when they attended the wedding reception of former
Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Hooda's nephew at a five-star hotel in New
Delhi on Sunday.
Conspicuous by their
absence, however, were Haryana governor Kaptan Singh Solanki and the man who
replaced Hooda as chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar. This despite the fact
that Khattar was invited and was in Delhi for a meeting with BJP president Amit
Shah after his infamous "Muslims should give up beef remark".
Modi, his cabinet colleagues
and senior BJP leaders attended the reception of Sukhinder Hooda aka Monu, son
of the former CM's elder brother Joginder, at Taj Palace. The event was hosted
by former CM Hooda. Sources, however, said that Modi and the Vadra couple came
to the venue at different times.
BJP's main poll plank
against Congress during the Haryana election campaigning was corruption and
Robert Vadra-owned company Skylight Hospitality's Rs 58-crore land deal with
realty giant DLF was the most effective weapon the saffron party used to pin
down Hooda in the assembly elections in October, 2014. The land deal
controversy had also played a key role in shaking the foundations of UPA-2
ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in May, 2014.
Sukhinder, whose father
passed away last year, has been handling all political campaigns of the former
CM and his MP son Deepender Hooda. He has married Manisha, a girl from a
Punjabi family.
Others who attended the
event included President Pranab Mukherjee, vice-president Hamid Ansari, former
PM Manmohan Singh, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka and her
husband Robert Vadra, Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Piyush Goyal and Mahesh
Sharma, senior Congress leaders Janardhan Dwivedi, Oscar Farnandes, former
Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit and Haryana
ministers, MPs and MLAs.
